Sony Puts PS3 to Work: Alzheimer Tackled Idle CPU

[Jared Moya]

If you thought buying a PlayStation 3 to enjoy quitely and solely its Blu Ray quality or the highly realistic games in its software pack, well…stop being that egotistic! Put your PS3 to work for better causes!

Sony informs us that it has teamed up with US biologists who already run the distributed computing project, folding@home (FAH).

The project harnesses the capacity of thousands of PCs to examine how the shape of proteins, critical to most biological functions, affect disease.

FAH say a network of PS3's will allow performance similar to supercomputers.

Via a partnership between Sony and the Folding@home distributed computing project, a client is being developed that will allow idle Cell Processors to turn their considerable computational power from crunching the polygons that makeup curvaceous videogame breasts to crunching the math of folding proteins hold the secret to curing cancer. Like the old SETI@home project that harnessed idle PCs to analyze masses of data collected by radio telescopes in hopes of discovering signals from another world, the Folding@home project will rely upon an army of PlayStation 3s rather than expensive super computers.

A standard PC working alone would take a day to simulate 1 billionth of a second of protein folding. But scientists believe that 10,000 idle PS3s can be four times faster than IBM's BlueGene/L System, which cranks out 280.6 trillion calculations per second. And if Sony could actually sell the PS3 with as much success as the PS2, imagine what 100 million units could do.

According to a Stanford University statement: “The PS3 client will also support some advanced visualization features. While the Cell microprocessor does most of the calculation processing of the simulation, the graphic chip of the PLAYSTATION 3 system (the RSX) displays the actual folding process in real-time using new technologies such as HDR and ISO surface rendering. It is possible to navigate the 3D space of the molecule using the interactive controller of the PS3, allowing us to look at the protein from different angles in real-time.”

http://www.playfuls.com/news_04086_S..._Cell_CPU.html

[thepuzzler]

That is a great idea. I'm impressed.

Is good that people's recreational devices can be used in such a positive way to the benefit of all mankind.

[Mels_Smileys45]

But what are they really up too?

[Signa]

its just a sales hype "buy a PS3 and cure cancer" like with the PS2 "our system is so powerful that it should be banned because it can launch missles for terrorists!"

it is exciting news, but if we wanted to help with cancer in the same way, we could (and probably would) just use the PCs we already own to do the job. we all have PCs and a net connection. we dont need a PS3 to do it.