This might be an unpopular opinion, but as much as folding uses compute power for a good cause, the combined co2 emissions from folding are also immense!

Some suggestions on how to make folding more efficienct, to reduce carbon emissions, lower energy prices, and reduce foreign energy dependency:

Using AI to calculate an efficiency score, to compare performance per watt between devices, users, and teams.

Promoting and increasing ARM hardware support (Android, snapdragon laptop chips, apple silicon), to make people switch from x86 and discrete GPU's, which are more inefficiency in terms of performance per watt.

Ending support for the oldest and most inefficient hardware, to make people upgrade and switch to newer more energy efficienct hardware.

If CPU's and GPU's are doing the same tasks, only GPU's, especially iGPU's, should run those tasks instead of CPU's, since they are much faster and way more efficient per watt than CPU's doing the same tasks.

Just not seeing anybody talking about this, and I think the Folding community should contribute to reducing carbon emissions and saving the environment, like everyone else.

In reply to kasdashdfjsah's message of 12 Dec 2025:

only GPU's, especially iGPU's, should run those tasks instead of CPU's

That is still not the case.
Maybe with the next generation of iGPU systems, they might finally result in iGPUs being able to match or even exceed a CPUs output per kWh, but none of the current ones do.


And as good as current GPUs are, even an averagely coded CPU application can result in much more efficient use of power than a well coded GPU application due to the high power usage of current GPUs compared to the much lower requirements for CPUs, which can have many, many more cores and threads and higher clock speeds.
And a well coded AVX512 application can chew through work at an incredible rate, compared to a well coded non- AVX512 application, while still using the same amount of power.
eg

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Grant
Darwin NT.