[KarlInOhio]

The most amazing thing on that chart is that nearly 3/4 of the CPU power comes from Playstations.

[taxcontrol]

Most people do not know the power of the PS3. Take a close look at the number of active Windows vs PS3 boxes and then compare their Tflops..... very revealing.

[texas booster]

The Playstation 3 has provided more computational ability for Folding@Home than any other development ever.

In terms of sheer gigaFLOPs, the GPU units (certain ATI X1600 - X1950XTX boards) have greater computational power per board. However, GPU units are crunching specialized water solvent models that general CPU units simply couldn’t touch.

The ATI X1950XTX has 48 vertex shaders that operate as a parallel computer to achieve unreal results. However, it appears that software development will only modestly broaden the work units that are suitable for the GPU.

The GPU is very important, but narrowly focused. The CPU is still required to do the generalized crunching of 80,000 atom proteins.

The PS3 is narrowly focused, but not as narrow as the GPU. It simulates the interaction of proteins with water molecules, and you can see Brownian motion of atoms on the protein.

This is really, really neat! If you like science, medical research or like making a difference in the lives of others, then Folding@home is a perfect outlet for your computers laying around the house.

[cost_benefit]

How many Playstations do we have on our team?