70 years worth of Gigaflops every day and counting...
posted by Suzanne LeGette on October 08, 2009
In August, Intel launched a project through Facebook - Progress thru Processors (PTP) and since then 127,000 people have become fans of the application which allows a user's computer to supply CPU power for humanitarian research. These users have demonstrated that the power of Social Media can make a difference. To date PTP users are collectively producing about 70 Gigaflops years worth of processing power every day. A Gigaflop by the way, is about a billion "floating point operations per second."
Volunteer computing used to be a concept familiar only to those who could instantly rattle off the definition of a Gigaflop. But thanks to Intel's collaboration with GridRepublic and UC Berkeley's BOINC computing labs, the power of volunteer computing is being introduced to millions of Facebook account holders. Measured all together the computing power of PTP would rank in the top 250 of the world's super computers.
That power is going to help research projects like Rosetta@home, ClimatePrediction.net and Africa@home, provide solutions for a variety of issues affecting our planet, from AIDS and malaria to helping combat global warming.
This intersection of volunteer computing with social media provides a very easy way for computer users to be actively engaged in helping solve some of the world's complex problems...one byte at a time. Join us on the PTP Facebook fan page - where you too can find the power to make a difference.
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tagged: facebook, Progress Thru Processors, social media, volunteer computing
