Nvidia GPUs Approach 1.5 PFlops In Folding@Home Project

Santa Clara (CA) - Nvidia GPUs have become the leading processing platform within Folding@Home and continue to grow quickly: GeForce Processors are likely to become the first technology to break the 1.5 PFlops barrier.

Nvidia GPUs currently represent 42% of the total processing power of Folding@Home - or 1428 TFlops of a total of 3372 TFlops. While it appears that Nvidia can increase its overall share in this environment only slowly, it has become the leading technology and is now close to be hitting 1.5 PFlops of overall performance. The current performance is achieved with 12,982 processing units, according to the statistics released by Folding@Home.

The second most powerful platform is Sony’s PS3 with 1251 TFlops (44,379 processors), followed by ATI Radeon graphics cards with 404 TFlops (3677 processors). At least in comparison with ATI/AMD, Nvidia’s advantage is currently based solely on the sheer number of GPUs on the network. Broken down to each unit, both Nvidia and ATI processors deliver 110 GFlops on average. PS3s are measured at 28 GFlops, while Windows CPUs, which represent the majority in absolute numbers on the network (211,978 active units), provide about 9 GFlops each.

"Applications like Folding@Home are just the beginning, every day we are seeing more and more examples of computing problems that are benefitting from CUDA and our GPU technologies," said Michael Steele, general manager of visual consumer solutions at Nvidia, in a prepared statement.

  • Narg
    I run F@H on normal CPUs, and ATI GPUs. I attempted to run the nVidia F@H, but the driver installation required for this was a mess. Crashed all the time too. If they got the power, great, but they don't have the programming expertese to make this worthwhile. Oh well. More wasted time and money. I'll stick to the easy and still powerfull ATI solution.
    Reply
  • RavenXE
    No problem with Nvidia F@H here
    Reply
  • Even if it was a mess, it is still worth it. What, you don't think an eventual opportunity to LIVE LONGER is worth it? You do realize that this is partially about extending lifespan, right?
    Reply
  • I ran the FOH client on my 8600GT a couple of times, but it kept crashing at about 40% of the way through each unit.....
    Reply
  • unatommer
    You have to use this with the Nvidia CUDA drivers as well (which are still in beta), you can't just pop over to Nvidia.com and download the latest driver...google nvidia cuda drivers and click on the first link.
    Reply