Is Clearspeed Finally Coming?

KingFish · Aug 26, 2005

After a long lull in the clearspeed front, it looks like we finally have made some headway. According to Tom's Hardware Guide a pci express X8 card will be made available in addition to the pci-x offering. This will significantly broaden their market for folders.

Also, pricing appears to be anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 for a card but that is still murky.

Here's a F@H thread about it:
http://forum.folding-community.org/viewtopic.php?t=13130

and a snippet from Tom's:
http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050825_210332.html

KingFish

dicecca112 · Aug 26, 2005

yeah, its gonna be a cold day in h*ll when I pay 1,000$ for a graphics card

TollhouseFrank · Aug 26, 2005

why not? i never thought i'd spend 500 on a graphics card, but i ended up doin' so.

besides, these are physics/FPU type thingies if i'm not mistaken. I wonder how well they'd help foldin' out though...

Who · Aug 26, 2005

Lol,

somewhere in a range of $1000 to $10,000.

That's a huge price range. You could get a nice dual core system, or two, or three for $10,000.

ihrsetrdr · Aug 26, 2005

It's not a graphics card, but an "add-in" card that uses a pci-e slot and boosts processing capability for a workstation in the same way an old pII slot 1 card did.

dicecca112 · Aug 27, 2005

still I could build two dedicated crunchers for 1000$

AMD_OCER · Aug 27, 2005

Yes you could build two dedicated folders for $1000, but they wouldn't give you a drop in the PPD bucket compared to what this card is probably capable of.

THG said:
During a demonstration at IDF, the PCI Express - consuming a total of just 25 watts - card showed a performance peak of about 55 GFlops with a minimum of about 45 GFlops. Putting this into perspective, a 2-way Xeon system with 3.2 GHz processors was shown running parallel to the card with a peak performance of about 10 GFlops.

Think about throwing a Clearspeed card or two into a Dothan system. Just think of the PPD per Watt. :burn:

Some Dothan systems folding certain Gromac's WU's can make 900 ppd by themselves. Maybe someone here who has a Dothan system or who knows the CPU specs could tell us how many Flops the an average Dothan makes. I bet it is alot less than 50 GFlops. Think about it before you spend $1000 for 500-1000 PPD

when this card could make Magnatudes more PPD.

hyperasus · Aug 27, 2005

Subscribed

dicecca112 · Aug 28, 2005

xeons are capable of more ppd than 1000

ihrsetrdr · Aug 28, 2005

Vijay Pande has some comments regarding Clearspeed .

davekusa · Aug 28, 2005

If I could get 2000 ppd off of clearspeed, i would spend the 1000.00 dollars

TollhouseFrank · Aug 28, 2005

naw... i'm just gonna wait until F@H for GPU's is released.... according to Pande... it looks like a septemberish launch for it.. maybe october.

dicecca112 · Aug 29, 2005

naw... i'm just gonna wait until F@H for GPU's is released.... according to Pande... it looks like a septemberish launch for it.. maybe october.

Hah then I can tell my school we don't need heat, I'll just user my puter

AMD_OCER · Aug 29, 2005

dicecca112 said:
xeons are capable of more ppd than 1000

Yeah I know xeon's are capable of more than 1000 PPD. I was just speculating that the clearspeed card... IF PPD production scaled equally with Flops... would make 5 times the PPD of a xeon system. Like the dual 3.2 10 Gflop peak system compared to the 55 Gflop peak clearspeed card.

And beside all that if it cost closer to $10,000... well it would'nt be worth it anyway. So there are too many iff's and possiblies yet... as no one has said what the card is capable of F@H wise.

davekusa · Aug 29, 2005

I didn't know that FAH was comming out with a GPU support??????/

dicecca112 · Aug 29, 2005

Yeah I know xeon's are capable of more than 1000 PPD. I was just speculating that the clearspeed card... IF PPD production scaled equally with Flops... would make 5 times the PPD of a xeon system. Like the dual 3.2 10 Gflop peak system compared to the 55 Gflop peak clearspeed card.

And beside all that if it cost closer to $10,000... well it would'nt be worth it anyway. So there are too many iff's and possiblies yet... as no one has said what the card is capable of F@H wise.

if you read the post vijay made in the above link, he alludes that not all the flops can be used.

threeme2189 · Aug 29, 2005

il take one if they give it to me for free.
then i would sell it for a few good pc's.

TollhouseFrank · Aug 29, 2005

davekusa said:
I didn't know that FAH was comming out with a GPU support??????/

its something that the pandegroup has been working on. The latest information Pande himself gave out referenced a possible launch of the GPU folding client in September-October.

Yet another way for us to brag about with Video Card is Best

davekusa · Aug 29, 2005

so Nvidia will pwn gromacs but only ATI will do QMD's..........lol

AMD_OCER · Aug 29, 2005

dicecca112 said:
if you read the post vijay made in the above link, he alludes that not all the flops can be used.

He was alluding that the cell processor wouldn't be good at using all of it's Flops for F@H as the cell processor is not as good on floating point operations as compared to fixed point operations. That thread turned into a Clearspeed verses Cell debate. Cell ≠ Clearspeed, they are completely different architectures.

Most benchmarks show theoretical performance anyway. We know how the Xeon and other CPU's perform in F@H, we don't know what the clearspeeds performance is. I am going off the benchmark (theoretical) speed of the Clearspeed to say that it could be a watt miser folding monster.

All I am saying is that:

IF PPD(Huge)+Cost($1,000 or less)+less watts= Good $ per PPD then

IF PPD(Scant)+Cost(much more than $1,000)+less watts= Bad $ per PPD then :bang head

Is Clearspeed Finally Coming?

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