I first participated in the Folding@Home project back in 2002, and have watched with interest as new client options continue to be made available (most recently the GPU2 client) and existing clients optimized (eg v4, v5, v6 of the standard Window's client). Flash forward to today, and we now have five major client platforms:
- Windows
- Linux
- MacOS
- PS3
- GPU
With subsets (graphical, text, screensaver) within each category as well the ability to choose SMP clients for multi-core / multi-proc platforms.
With all the different options available, with the options in different developmental stages (eg Windows SMP remains in rather rough beta stage after several years), I think it would be helpful to know how the clients measure up against each other in regard to their *scientific value*. While I'm assuming there isn't a lot of difference between the different OS platforms in the regard, it would make sense to me that there would be some variance between:
- CPU specific standard vs SMP client productivity
- CPU vs GPU vs PS3 client productivity
- ATi vs Nvidia productivity
Why helpful? Because, while points and competition is pretty fun, the scientific value of our participation is (or can be with the right information) a key factor to consider when one is in a purchasing mode. And it may very well be that points aren't a very good indicator of the actual scientific value contributed across the different platforms. Armed with this information, users would be able to consider more than just the perceived point productivity when looking at adding new hardware to their 'Fold', perhaps focusing instead on the upgrade's scientific value.