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Stanford's Folding@Home for Sony PS3 website

Posted Mar 18, 2007 at 5:04AM EST by QJ Staff

Listed in: PS3 Tags: Folding@Home, playstation 3 updates, SCEI, Sony, Stanford University

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Sony's PlayStation 3 is about 20 times more powerful at calculating the folding of human proteins than an average PC. That's what you'll hear if you watch the cool video about how the PS3 is contributing to Stanford University's Folding@Home project.

In other words, the PS3 (with its amazing processing power) is a powerful data-crunching tool for scientists looking to cure cancer and other diseases.

And you can watch and see for yourself how the PS3 is calculating and simulating the actions of reactions of the very molecules that give us life or cause our diseases! This screenshot, taken from the Folding@Home site launched by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan (SCEI), shows the PS3 studying a molecule:

SCEI's Folding@Home website has this to say:

The goal of this project is to research protein folding and misfolding to gain an understanding of how these are related to disease. Targeted diseases include (but are not limited to) Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and many forms of cancer.

Here's a quick overview of why the PS3 is a valuable addition to Folding@Home. A previous QJ.NET article has more interesting facts and screenshots of the Folding@Home process on the PS3.

The PS3 system's Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) processor will dramatically add to the computing performance of the Folding@home project.
Folding@home for PS3 utilizes the RSX graphics processor to provide a real-time simulation of the folding behavior of proteins.
The locations of PS3 systems that are running Folding@home are displayed on the world map that is visible in the background.

Folding@Home is an optional feature of an upcoming firmware update for the PS3 (Gamasutra reported that it's in FW 1.6).

If you want to help Folding@Home even more, you can also connect your PC to Folding@Home. A recent article about SETI@home had a shameless plug about "Team QJ.NET" (Jammie, modcase, etc.) and their Folding@Home effort.

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Nice to see it runs through the XMB and therefore can use the RSX.

This should REALLY help them, even if only a quarter of people with PS3's ran it. Cell is made for these types of scientific programs...I wonder what else they will release....I guess they could release almost any type of simulator, although they would only do as screensavers or things to mess with when you are baked (assuming they would let you change and play with start values)

Oh, I got it....a ridiculously detailed fractal generator....perfect....

# W00T! — Guest 2007-03-18 12:40

This will be great when it's released. I'm definitely going to be leaving my PS3 on more to let this run. Hopefully every PS3 owner will do the same.

Does anybody know if this can use the RSX for calculations like the PC version of Folding@Home can use ATI cards, or is it just display only?

# PRobably just for display... — Shatterdome 2007-03-18 12:52

The cell can provide more then enough number crunching for the application...although it's not rendering anything special, so there probably is some horsepower left over on the RSX that could be used...

# I Hope Everyone Uses It!!! — CHUCKINGROCKSATSPACESHIPS 2007-03-18 13:46

This is really exciting and I hope it does some good for the world!!!

# RSX not used — Guest 2007-03-18 14:46

The calculations the RSX are purely for the graphics, and don't contribute to the number crunching for the folding unit.

Which kinda sucks, being you're not really going to be watching it, and if you're leaving your PS3 on you'd want it to be making the most of the power its using.

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