PS3 users contribute to scientific research

 

Great progress has been made since PlayStation 3 systems became part of Standford University's Folding@home programme, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) has announced.

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Folding@home is a distributed computing project aimed at understanding protein folding, misfolding and related diseases.

Distributed computing is a method of processing in which different parts of a programme run simultaneously on two or more computers that are communicating with each other over a network.

Since the programme launched in March, participation by the PS3 user community has been described as 'phenomenal', providing Folding@home with immense computing power that is helping to fast-forward its research.

Thanks to PS3’s powerful Cell processors, the Folding@home programme has become one of the most powerful distributed computing networks in the world and is quickly approaching a level of historical proportions.

SCE also announced that, starting tomorrow, it is providing a Folding@home application update that will further enhance the user experience.

The updated software features an improvement in folding calculation speeds, increased visibility of user location on the globe - identified through IP addresses - and the ability for users to create longer donor or team names.

"The PS3 turnout has been amazing, greatly exceeding our expectations and allowing us to push our work dramatically forward," said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home programme lead.

"Thanks to PS3, we have performed simulations in the first few weeks that would normally take us more than a year to calculate.

"We are now gearing up for new simulations that will continue our current studies of Alzheimer’s and other diseases."

Mass support in the PS3 community

More than 250,000 unique PS3 users have registered to the programme in just one month, delivering nearly 400 teraflops of computer power.

This means a total of over 700 teraflops at a single moment has been achieved - more than double the computing capacity of the network before PS3 joined the programme.

"We continue to be thrilled with the ongoing contributions of the PS3 user community in helping the Folding@home programme study the causes of many different diseases that afflict our society," said Masayuki Chatani, SCE's Corporate Executive and CTO Computer.

"As we move forward, we are issuing a call to action for all PS3 owners around the world to download the Folding@home application and help this cause.

"These PS3 fans can also be part of history as the Folding@home distributed computing programme inches closer to achieving a petaflop – a measure of computing power that has never before been reached."

PS3 users can download the new update version 1.1 by restarting the Folding@home application.

New Folding@home users can join the programme by simply clicking on the Folding@home icon within the Network menu of the XrossMediaBar or can optionally set the application to run automatically whenever the PS3 is idle.

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