How much time would it take a human to calculate a WU?

[ArmoredGuns]

Funny, but very interesting question.

[Trivolve]

Firstly, this should be under the "Science" section.

To answer your question:
http://movementarian.com/2006/08/18/flo ... man-brain/

Furthermore, there is no real consensus regarding the computational power of the human brain. Some estimates suggest that it is capable of 1017 FLOPS, or 100 petaflops.

According to Hans Moravec of Carnegie Mellon University (whom used the processing speed of the retina), estimates that the brain operates at 100 million MIPS (or is it 100 teraflops?). Nick Bostrom of Yale estimates it to be 1,000 times higher than Moravec’s number (or 100 petaflops).

AMD Athlon @ 600 mhz - 2.4 gigaflops (single precision), 1 gigaflop (double precision)
Pentium 4 @ 2 ghz - 8 gigaflops (single precision)
Pentium 4 @ 3 ghz - 12 gigaflops
Athlon 64 X2 4600 - 14.7 gigaflops, 17400 MIPS
G5 Dual 2.3GHz - 30 gigaflops
XBox 360 Xenon chip -115 gigaflops
XBOX 360 Xenos graphics chip - 240 gigaflops
nVIDIA 7800 GTX 512 - 200 gigaflops
ATi X1900 - 553.8 gigaflops

So in theory if the Pentium 4 @ 3Ghz takes 1 day to finish 1 WU, taking the brain as 100petaflops, it'd take.... 6.912ms to complete 1 WU. Lol.

Of course this is all just for fun. The mechanism for calculation in the brain is so different that a direct comparison is flawed.

[theMASS]

...But the brain isn't running software with optimized Assembly loops using SSE SSE2 and 3DNow! with separate versions for x86-64 registers. ....so "our" hardware is leaving a lot on the table. LOL ...I think I'm still running DOS....and my memory is definitely shot....

Answer #2 9 hours for an SMP WU if I use my computer

[nwkelley]

haha, nice post, i'll give this one a shot tomorrow, calculators or math by hand??

[toTOW]

You can imagine both ...

[Foxery]

It sounds like the quote about human brain speed is considering something like the number of neurons that can fire at once, or an estimation of our ability to analyze and respond to the "data" from our 5 senses, but normal humans certainly can't process math very quickly. I can't imagine it would be possible to calculate a moderate size protein fold in an entire human lifetime without some computer assistance.

[ArmoredGuns]

lol no, I wasn't talking about the capability of the human brain. I was talking about the average human calculating an average WU by hard math. How long would it take?

[VijayPande]

So, let's say it takes 1 second for a human being + calculator to do one floating point operation (even that's a lot of fast button pressing). If so, people do 1 FLOP. FAH as a whole runs at ~1 PFLOP = 1,000,000,000,000,000 = 10^15 FLOPS per second. That means that what FAH can do **in a second** would take a human being + calculator more than **30 million years**! Good thing we've got computers.

[bapriebe]

...But the brain isn't running software with optimized Assembly loops....so "our" hardware is leaving a lot on the table.

If Pande et al release an optimized wetware software client, where would I find an Arctic Cooler in a size 7 3/8?

[dittopb]

...But the brain isn't running software with optimized Assembly loops....so "our" hardware is leaving a lot on the table.

If Pande et al release an optimized wetware software client, where would I find an Arctic Cooler in a size 7 3/8?

It's available at your nearest grocery store, aisle 7 next to the "icy-cold beer" section.
I highly recommend the liquid cooling, works the best.

[Baowoulf]

So, let's say it takes 1 second for a human being + calculator to do one floating point operation (even that's a lot of fast button pressing). If so, people do 1 FLOP. FAH as a whole runs at ~1 PFLOP = 1,000,000,000,000,000 = 10^15 FLOPS per second. That means that what FAH can do **in a second** would take a human being + calculator more than **30 million years**! Good thing we've got computers.

I once heard the human brain being described more like a CPU then say a HDD. Not sure if this is true but I wonder how fast you could do a WU if you hooked up a brain and used it's full power.

[VijayPande]

Most of the brain's power compared to a computer is in the visual cortex, not in doing math. Computers will win for math (eg needed for simulations). People will win (for a while) in visual discrimination and other analogous tasks.

[sneakers55]

Most of the brain's power compared to a computer is in the visual cortex, not in doing math.

The brain consists (IMHO) of a huge collection of tightly targeted processes running on custom hardware. Math takes a huge time just for brain I/O.

[Mobius0412]

The brain consists (IMHO) of a huge collection of tightly targeted processes running on custom hardware. Math takes a huge time just for brain I/O.

Seems to me that it's rather common hardware, just about everyone has one.

[alancabler]

The brain consists (IMHO) of a huge collection of tightly targeted processes running on custom hardware. Math takes a huge time just for brain I/O.

Seems to me that it's rather common hardware, just about everyone has one.

"Just about" ...