GPUGRID is a

volunteer computing Volunteer computing is a type of distributed computing in which people donate their computers' unused resources to a research-oriented project, and sometimes in exchange for credit points. The fundamental idea behind it is that a modern desktop co ...

project hosted by

Pompeu Fabra University Pompeu Fabra University ( ca, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, UPF, ; es, link=no, Universidad Pompeu Fabra) is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia in Spain. The university was created by the Autonomous Government of Catalo ...

and running on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) software platform. It performs full-atom

molecular biology Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and physi ...

simulations that are designed to run on

Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

CUDA CUDA (or Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a parallel computing platform and application programming interface (API) that allows software to use certain types of graphics processing units (GPUs) for general purpose processing, an approach ca ...

-compatible

graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...

Former support for PS3s

Support for the

PS3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on November 11, 2006, in Japan, November ...

Cell microprocessor Cell is a multi-core microprocessor microarchitecture that combines a general-purpose PowerPC core of modest performance with streamlined coprocessing elements which greatly accelerate multimedia and vector processing applications, as well as m ...

and the subsequent PS3GRID project was dropped in 2009 due to updated firmware preventing the installation of required third party software. This included

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

s that are required to run

BOINC The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC, pronounced – rhymes with "oink") is an open-source middleware system for volunteer computing (a type of distributed computing). Developed originally to support SETI@home, it beca ...

. The massive throughput of

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobil ...

s has also made the PS3 client largely redundant. As of September 2009, a mid-range Nvidia GPU ran GPUGRID applications approximately five times faster than the Cell microprocessor.

References

External links

*
Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)
{{DEFAULTSORT:GPUGRID.net Science in society Free science software Volunteer computing projects

Former support for PS3s

See also

References

Further reading

External links