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PS3 Folding@Home Begins with Impressive Numbers
hansamurai writes "As we've previously discussed, the Folding@Home client is now available on the PS3, and already some early results are in. The total number of teraflops generated by PS3s has already exceeded all other OS contributions combined and the entire project is heading towards one petaflop of distributed computing power. Stanford notes that their teraflops calculation is conservatively calculated so the total power could be under-appreciated. With the PS3 European release complete and the Folding client already available to them, the number of users will continue to grow for the time being, let's hope that the project does not run out of work units to pass out. Kotaku has some numbers that are a few hours old since the Stanford server is getting hit pretty hard with the renewed interest in the project."
So the PS3 looks amazing, up to 20 times faster then an average computer?
Well as others pointed out the Cell processor is MADE to do this, it's not made to do games (believe me, the processor has stuff that's directly against good programming design for video games, the size of the memory available to each process is a big problem) but it can do this.
However also remember that for the PC you're also running an OS under it. running a firewall, a anti-virus software, Explorer or firefox, and other fun tools will slow you down even more. The way I read it is that a raw Ps3 with nothing else running is about 20 times faster then an average PC with an average workload of stuff on it. I still run folding at home, I support it, but my Bittorrents, my video tools, my firefox will all take away the precious cycles that Folding is after, however on a Ps3 if it's running at all it's running at maximum speed as there's nothing else really in the background. So the numbers will run a bit higher.
Overall the Ps3 is a remarkable crunching computer, too bad that doesn't make for a great video game system....