PS3's Folding@home Computing Power 'Approaching Historical Proportions'

April 25, 2007 | By: James Brightman

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"Behold the power of the PS3!" says Sony. In just one month, PS3 owners participating in the Folding@home project have enabled computing power to double, helping medical researchers accelerate their simulations. Sony is providing an update for PS3 owners to download tomorrow as well.

Representatives for Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) have proudly announced that participation by PS3 owners in the Stanford University Folding@home distributed network has allowed the medical research project's computing power to be doubled in just one month since PS3 users were allowed to join.

The computing power is being used to help run complex simulations, which will enable scientists to better understand protein folding, misfolding and related diseases. According to SCE, "thanks to PS3's powerful Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.), the Folding@home program has become one of the most powerful distributed computing networks in the world and is quickly approaching a level of computing power that is of historical proportions."

Since the program was launched on the PS3 a little over a month ago, more than 250,000 unique PS3 users have registered; users are delivering nearly 400 teraflops, achieving a total computing power of over 700 teraflops at a single moment; and a "halo-effect" from the PS3 has been observed as the number of active PCs has increased by 20 percent in the last month.

"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 program 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."

"We continue to be thrilled with the ongoing contributions of the PS3 user community in helping the Folding@home program study the causes of many different diseases that afflict our society," added Masayuki Chatani, Corporate Executive and CTO Computer, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "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 program inches closer to achieving a petaflop � a measure of computing power that has never before been reached."

SCE also announced that tomorrow it will provide an update to the program on the PS3, bringing it to version 1.1. The update will "further enhance the user experience" by offering an improvement in folding calculation speeds, increased visibility of user location on the globe and the ability for users to create longer donor or team names.