GPU performance for folding

[Joe_H]

Yes, the computing arms race continues. I personally started out on an IBM 1130 using punch cards in high school using Fortran, the business students used RPG or COBOL. College was an IBM 360, upgraded to a 370 while I was there.

GPUs just happen to do a type of calculation that is very useful for the computing algorithms involved in F@h, and other simulations. So it can speed those up greatly. Going back 30+ years I recall the first vector co-processors being added to computers, same kind of speedup if the algorithm was suitable.

[G3WGV]

Sounds like we both got into computers around the same time Joe. I worked on air traffic control systems in the early 70s and remember that the first "GPU" I ever dealt with was a PDP11/34 driving a huge CRT screen with vector-drawn radar blips. I spent ages writing the interface code between it and the IBM selector channel... all in IBM/360 BAL and PAL-11 assemblers. Good times!

It really is extraordinary to think how far computing has come in just one lifetime - there really is no equal in any other branch of engineering and it was a blast to be able to make a career out of it!

[HaloJones]

I would argie over the computing achievements being the best. Yes, we have amazingly fast computers but until we get quantum going properly we still use the electronic equivalent of a valve going on and off. So valve computing from the 40s to electronic valves in 2020. 80 years give or take

Compare that to:

December 1903 - first flight by a human
July 1969 - man lands on the moon

less than 66 years to go from a man gliding in a wooden bird to a rocket capable of taking a man to the moon and back to Earth safely.

[G3WGV]

I might have to concede that point, HJ but not without a bit of a fight...

Yes the flying things trajectory from 1903 to 1969 was truly awesome but the next 50 years were pretty dull. I remember the moon landings (I was 18 when Apollo 11 did its thing) and all the promises of solar exploration, bases on the moon, colonies on Mars and all that. None of it happened. Terrestrially we travel no faster now than we did in 1969, having briefly experienced supersonic flight (if you were wealthy). In the mean time, computers have gone from IBM 360s living in air conditioned rooms the size of a small field costing 10s of millions of dollars to the beast I have sat beside me folding at 1.8M PPD, which was rather less expensive.

As a light aircraft pilot and computer nerd I am perhaps a bit conflicted on this one!

[G3WGV]

By way of an epilogue, the boss (the one with the credit card) came in this morning, had his first coffee of the day while checking the folding factory's overnight performance, then ordered an RTX 2080 Super, a sort of big brother to the existing 2070 Super. Interesting times ahead!