Slashdot Mirror
Impressive GPU Numbers From Folding@Home
ludd1t3 writes, "The Folding@Home project has put forth some impressive performance numbers with the GPU client that's designed to work with the ATI X1900. According to the client statistics, there are 448 registered GPUs that produce 29 TFLOPS. Those 448 GPUs outperform the combined 25,050 CPUs registered by the Linux and Mac OS clients. Ouch! Are ASICs really that much better than general-purpose circuits? If so, does that mean that IBM was right all along with their AS/400, iSeries product which makes heavy use of ASICs?"
Are ASICs really that much better than general-purpose circuits?
Generally ASICs are much better than general-purpose circuits except in general cases.
ASCII silly question, get a silly ANSI.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Look at the first two letters of the acronym: Application Specific. A screwdriver and a swiss army knife will both turn a screw, but the screwdriver is going to be much more efficient at it. GPUs are finely tuned to rip through massive volumes of floating point vectors and not much else. It just so happens that the folding project also fits this desctiption and as such is an excellent use of an otherwise wasted resource.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.