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PS3 to help cure cancer? |
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Shino
Fade into this fantasy, caught in the web of time
Age: 49
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Joined: 15 Sep 2002 |
 Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2007 8:51 am Post subject: PS3 to help cure cancer? |
Well ... sortof.
Some of you that have been here a while may remember when I brought up Grid.org like 3 years ago!
It's a grid computing effort that lets multiple computers work on the same problems in seperate little chunks. I still run the Grid client on my computer at home.
Well this is similar. It's called Folding@Home. It uses PC on the internet to do protien folding calculations to find out more about diseases.
Well now, the PS3 can join in the quest. With the new 1.6 firmware coming out, there will be an option to allow your PS3 to help with Folding@home during idle time. This marks the first time a video game console was used for this type of purpose!
| Gamespot wrote: | PS3 Folding@home with 1.6 update
New firmware upgrade will link PlayStation 3s to Stanford-run distributed-computing project researching cancer, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's causes.
By Tor Thorsen, GameSpot
Posted Mar 15, 2007 6:02 pm ET
At last year's Tokyo Game Show, Ken Kutaragi gave a keynote address that contained little new PlayStation 3 information. It did, however, outline how the PS3's massive computing power would be used for an altruistic endeavor called the Folding@home Project.
Organized by Stanford University, the Folding@home Project is similar to the University of California-Berkeley's SETI@home project. The latter effort uses idling PCs linked to the Web as a "virtual supercomputer" to help the SETI Project search for extraterrestrial life.
The Folding@home Project will do something similar. It will integrate idling, online PS3s into a distributed-computing project studying the causes of various diseases. Among the ailments under investigation are Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis, and various cancers.
"Millions of users have experienced the power of PS3 entertainment. Now they can utilize that exceptional computing power to help fight diseases," Masayuki Chatani, Sony Computer Entertainment's chief technical officer, said in a statement. "In order to study protein folding, researchers need more than just one supercomputer, but the massive processing power of thousands of networked computers. Previously, PCs have been the only option for scientists, but now, they have a new, more powerful tool--[the] PS3."
Folding@home Project functionality will be included in the 1.6 PS3 firmware update, which is due out at the end of the month. After installing the update, PS3 owners who wish to join the project will be able to find the Folding@home Project under the network menu of the PS3's XrossMediaBar (XMB). PS3s will only join the Folding@home Project network when in an idle state while connected to the Internet. |
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Silver Adept
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| Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2007 12:08 pm Post subject: |
Excellent. Glad that people are utilizing all that processing power under the hood for useful and good things. With the way that our consoles are heading into always-on and always-connected sorts of modes, there's a pretty big amount of power that could be harnessed into grid computing. |
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Shino
Fade into this fantasy, caught in the web of time
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 10:18 am Post subject: |
Wow... just... Wow.
PS3 TRIPLES folding@home's computing power!
Check it out.
They're pretty amazing too.
Win PCs --> 0.00095 TFlops / processor
Mac PowerPC --> 0.00080
Mac Intel --> 0.00259
Linux PCs --> 0.00140
PS3 --> 0.02448
Amazing difference. 25x a Windows PC on average!
| gizmodo.com wrote: | Breaking: PS3 Triples Folding At Home's Computing Power to Over 500 TFLOPS..PFLOPS in Spitting Range
foldingstat2.pngThis is freaking amazing. I was checking out some message boards last night at the Folding Forums at Stanford, a group that tracks the Folding at Home application. You know, that's the software that runs on Sony PS3 or PS2 gaming consoles, all linking up over the Internet and using their spare cycles to help the university process vast amounts of Alzheimers research data? To my astonishment, I discovered that a small legion of 13,000 PS3s running the Folding at Home app account for most of the computing power in the project, amounting to about 56 percent (PS3s = 316 measured TFLOPS) of the total.
On average, between the superfast and superslow PCs, 159,033 PCs are only doing about half that much. (151 TFLOPS). Essentially, 13,000 PS3s have just made the Folding at Home Project the fastest distributed computing project on the planet, ever. (I believe it used to be SETI @ Home, which was something like 280 TFLOPS.) This also means the PS3 met Stanford professor Vijay Pande's expected one-month goal in one day. (We'll update this post with confirmation once Dr. Pande gets back to us.)
The project just needs about 18,000 more PS3s participating to make the Folding at Home project the first distributed computing project to hit a Petaflop. To put that into perspective, the Japanese MDGRAPE-3, RIKEN's supercomputer, has about a Petaflop of computing power.
And the potential goes on from there. There are 2 million PS3s in the wild, and over 100 million PS2s shipped thus far. PS3 owners, what are you waiting for? Get the word out to other PS3 owners. Let's help cure Alzheimer's disease. –Brian Lam |
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Silver Adept
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 12:18 pm Post subject: |
Now, I wonder if anyone saw this usage of gaming consoles in a manner like this, once they started to make them more as computers-in-a-box rather than game consoles. |
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Daijaga
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 12:39 pm Post subject: |
I doubt it, or companies would be trying to capitalize on it and make a profit rather than letting some scientist use them for free research processing. |
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