Distributed computing programs are nothing new and neither are discussions about using the VPU of your video card to fold. A recently leaked document from the Stanford University Graphics Lab has the X1800XT leading it's rival the GTX by over 7x in certain types of calculations with performance equivelant to a 10.5 GHz P4 CPU.
Maybe the overall architecture lends itself better to scientific calculations or maybe the X1800 series is just everything ATI claims. In any case it looks like it might be THE graphics card for folding at home applications in terms of performance. This could mean a huge boost for Folding at Home teams all the world just like OURS here at XS that recently passed over it's one millionth work packet.
See the attached PDF for details.
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