I thought about this briefly, myself, while in computer architecture optimization classes. As the GPU is basically a tailored CPU used to offload graphics processing from the main CPU, why can’t you offload more things onto it?’

And the answer is: you can. Folding@Home is a distributed computing project that is developed by Stanford University, and has been around awhile. While I don’t currently use it, I have in the past. I support the World Community Grid project, currently, because it gets me free gigs on Easynews, and it works with the Boinc client for my linux machines. But, Folding@Home always seemed to be the most efficient at what it does. No frills, no fancy screensavers, little overhead. It just folds and folds and folds protein.

Now, it can stake claim to unused GPU cycles on that roaring video card you have. And you only use a fraction of those while not going for that next rank in Battlefield 2. Desktop computing can even consider to have an idle 3d processor, for the most part.

Unfortunately, they only have this working on ATI cards. They couldn’t get it working on the Nvidia flavors. This leaves me out in the cold, at least for now. The chips are just a bit too specialized, and not in the “general” category of GPU’s anymore.

Andy Keane, general manager of visualization applications at Nvidia, said in response to the ATI/Stanford announcement that general processing graphics processing units (GPGPUs) so far have been “fundamentally flawed” in a sense that there has not been a lot of “commercial exploitation with GPUs as a processor.”

He mentioned that Nvidia wants to change this situation and considers the GPGPU market as “exciting” and something that “the company has been looking at for years.” He stated that he had no personal knowledge of the development of a Folding@Home client for the Nvidia platform, but stressed that the company has a “long-standing relationship with Stanford.”

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Google has been tripping the light fantastic with acquisitions and features on their Web 2.0 kick. After being fairly modest in features and additions to their repertoire the first few years, the last couple years they have produced and bought out a plethora of new web-based apps. It took off with Gmail and Google maps, and hasn’t slowed down since.

One that was bought out earlier this year is a web-based word processor named Writely. After hearing about it, I wanted to try it out. But, unfortunately, soon after Google snatched it up, they stopped accepting new signups without an invitation (ala Gmail). Luckily, after a bit of searching, I was able to get an invite and try out the new app.

It is very simple, but elegant. So far it runs smooth as silk. I can see why Google wanted it, as the interface already reminds me of Gmail’s. It seems to do a great job of simple word processing. It also allows you to write and edit in HTML, which can make it a very nice tool for bloggers/web site updates. In fact, it has a tab with options such as “View as a blog” and “Publish to your blog”. Documents can also save to PDF and other popular word processing formats.

It has a collaboration feature that allows multiple people on Writely to edit or change a document. One can add or remove collaborators at will, and you can see their additions and revisions at any time.

Writely is still in beta with no real release date posted anywhere. There is also no word on when they will allow public sign-ups again (if ever, even Gmail still technically needs invites). I have several invites to dispense, and I doubt I will need them all, so if anyone is interested in one, leave a comment below (with a valid email), or reply to this post on the forum.

Yeah, so, I stole that title from a digg.com comment… so sue me. I’m linking it at least!

IBM and Georgia Tech have coaxed a chip to run at 500GHz, a record for a silicon-based device, by dropping the temperature to minus 451 degrees Fahrenheit.

Apparently they weren’t astounded by the fact that it runs at 350GHz at room temperature? I guess because it is a very small chip consisting of just a few transistors. Gating and combinations will slow that puppy down quick. I’d like to see what a moderate processor, like a cell phone chip, can do before I start getting hopeful about PC chips being so zippy.

But, on the other hand, I would be damn happy with a 2x or 3x increase in cap speed because of this technology. I’m not holding my breath for the 100x increase. And who knows what these things will cost.

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