Sony PS3 ventures into Distributed Computing to aid in Medical research

If you own a PlayStation®3 video game console, you have in your possession a potential supercomputer. You could also play an important role by joining a Stanford University research team to explore causes of incurable diseases such as Cancer, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s diseases among others. In a press conference, Sony Computer Entertainment announces an important software update that will leverage the vast processing powers of PS3. The video game console implements a powerful Cell processor that is roughly 10 times faster than a standard chip in a PC. Sony hopes that PS3 owners will link their consoles to boost efforts of the academic research with their idle computing power.
The project, referred to as Folding@home program, is a distributed computing venture primarily involved in carrying out intensive research in protein folding, “misfolding” and study of incurable diseases. This is a very complex and demanding process. A typical PC would take ages to accomplish this. According to Vijay Pande, Director of the research project, a single PS3 console will perform Folding@home calculations between 20 and 30 times faster than a conventional PC. If millions of PS3 owners joined the project, the processing power would be astounding. Participants essentially download data from Stanford University via a distributed computing environment. The Folding@home application performs complex calculations and sends the data back to Stanford. The project is similar to Berkeley’s SETI@home, which searches for extraterrestrial intelligence and heavily relies on personal computers. With multitudes of PS3s joining the party, millions of simulations will be possible and ultimately speed up the research process.
The PS3 software update will be available late March. PlayStation®3 users will take part by clicking on a Folding@home icon, or optionally set the application to run when the consoles are idle.