Whats a super PI score, I know this is a stupid question
No I'm in the same boat what is SuperPI? and while we are at it what the heck is this "folding" I keep reading about??? :?
SuperPI is a little bit of software that uses a basic algorith to calculate decimal places of PI - check google.
"Folding" is stanford universitys attempt to get peoples computers to predict protein structure during their idle time. It was the first major project of its kind. After that came Seti from Berkely University - an attempt to monitor radio signals for signs of extraterrestrials. Now Seti has moved to a software called BOINC - allowing people with other projects in computational biochemistry, computational physics, climate prediction and computational mathematics to attach themselves to the software - this way people can decide what project takes their fancy and want to help.
I'm currently particpating major into LHC@Home - a CERN project designed to aid the construction of a Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. They want to simulate particles going around a particular 27km loop for collisions and experiments - but they need things like supermagnets to be correctly aligned. Thats the computational aspect - lots of directed simulations.
However BOINC has allowed lots of other projects similar like Folding to expand - Rosetta is a project designed to improve current protein prediction algorithms by testing them against known protein structure found by x-ray diffraction - so that projects like Predictor@Home can successfully find structuires of other proteins to answer biomedical questions relating to disease and drugs. Whereas Folding is testing their software against unknown proteins to aid the fight against disease.
Generally, people are either pro-Folding or pro-BOINC. I love helping physics, so I do BOINC - it also allows me to help other projects. e.g. 60% physics, 30% biochemistry, 10% mathematics etc.
Most, if not all, people on these boards are pro-Folding. If you want to find out about BOINC, google it (like anything else these days!!).
Also, these computational tasks help people guage CPU speeds when 100% load, and help with overclocking 'burning in'.
edit: my superPI @ 1M is 35s with BOINC at 100% on both procs