Folding@home Capacity Doubled by PS3

Finally getting some value out of all those game consoles...

Extra computing power from idle PS3s has helped the capacity of Stanford University's Folding@home project double in the last month.

The project, which aims to further the understanding of how proteins fold in order to limit the development of a number of diseases, was given a boost by the dramatically improved processing power acquired following a system software update made available to PS3 owners last month.

Mass uptake of an application within the update has enabled researchers to utilize the processing power of hundreds of thousands of dormant PlayStation 3 consoles.

“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,” he added.

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