PlayStation 3 to join Folding@Home for Cure@PS3

There's no denying it, even though the PlayStation 3 may be the most late, most expensive, and most, um, well ventilated of this this generation's consoles, Sony's also going out of their way to make the device appear as versatile as possible. So hell, if your machine is going to burn energy when not in use, best to put that power suck toward a good cause, right? Stanford and Sony have announced that PlayStation 3s will be able to participate in Cure@PS3, making gamers' consoles massively parallelized computing nodes for the Folding@Home project. (You're on Engadget's Folding@Home team, right?) Right up top is a taste of the eye candy that awaits those who dedicate their Cell processor to stamping out cancer with the Stanford crew, but the veneer doesn't stop there: click on for a slew of sexy new PS3 pics that just surfaced.

[Thanks, Mike! Pics via MaxConsole]

[snowglyder Posted Aug 24th 2006 11:28AM]

Nice trump card, Sony. Now no one can EVER say ANYTHING bad about the PS3.

Way to turn the attention away from your exploding batteries!

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 24th 2006 11:51AM]

To all those bashing Folding@Home: I've been folding for quite some time now and on occasion visit stanford to oogle at things. Though I am not a researcher working on F@H I can honestly say that the work that it is doing is helping reasearch along, from a scientific point of view. The kind of single machine that it would take to actualy simulate that many different protein folding algorhythms is insane, and where it not for this project the amount of data for medical research would be severely lessened. Do not Folding is not JUST for cancer, it also helps with Alzheimers, Huntingtons, Osteogenesis Imperfecta, and some others I dont' remember. Having seen several people die from cancer, including someone near and dear to me, and knowing how much of a help this distributed computing program is, I am ashamed at some of you that are advising throwing money at the problem in stead of actualy assisting it in an active and viable way.

I commend sony for making a PS3 F@H client (for one because it saves me from having to code it), and for another, because it really does actualy help. I don't think this is in any way a publicity stunt, but moreso jsut a way to help, I can't see this as much of a barganing chip for anyone, not even sony.

Even if some of you fail to see the light even after reading this, then I guess your beyond help. My hats off to sony and even more so for those others on Joystiq willing to put forth the effort to help with this research.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 24th 2006 1:42PM]

hello
this comment has to do with the heat and noise issue of the ps3. the ps3 will use heat pipes, a feature developed at los alamos, that greatly reduces heat (to the point of awesomely cooled system-ness) and the ps3, like the new slim-ps2 will be just as quiet (super silent). no worries negative nancies! no worries be happy!

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 24th 2006 1:48PM]

hi its me just fixing the los alamos detail... what i meant was that heat pipes were used in nuclear reactors and space shuttles for getting rid of large amounts of heat. they were greatly favored by los alamos (some guy specifically) but not developed by them (i think).

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 24th 2006 3:11PM]

I applaud Sony for doing this with the PS3 because it has been said that the Cell's architecture is perfect for such mathematical crunching tasks.

I had hoped TiVo would do something like this years ago, but then again, the original 50Mhz PowerPC chip and the later/current 200Mhz MIPS processor weren't/aren't powerful enough to do such tasks along with almost-always-on program guide indexing.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 25th 2006 2:08AM]

Apparantly no one here knows exactly what F@H is, this should explain it:
http://www.teamhackaday.com/wiki/index.php?title=Folding%40Home

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 25th 2006 6:05AM]

ok kids... stop bitching around about sony good / sony evil... its a good thing, and if youre too lousy not to leave your pc/ps3/xbox on 24/7 its your problem.

just one thing is really disturbing me: why dont they bring over the cool graphics to the PC/MAC GUI ? i sure wouldnt mind the eyecandy.... the actual version is buggy and looks like crap...

[FuturePastNow Posted Aug 25th 2006 1:56PM]

"the ps3 will use heat pipes, a feature developed at los alamos, that greatly reduces heat (to the point of awesomely cooled system-ness)"

Heat pipes don't reduce heat, they just transfer it from one place to another. Fans are still needed to dissipate the heat.

In the PS3's case, all this really means is that there isn't enough room for a heatsink large enough to cool the Cell, so they're using a couple of smaller heatsinks connected by heatpipes.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 25th 2006 6:03PM]

"why dont they bring over the cool graphics to the PC/MAC GUI ?"

1. Mac, not MAC. MAC is an acronym. Mac is short for Macintosh. Get it right.

2. Have you ever used OS X? It has plenty of eye candy, layered on top of well-considered UI guidelines.

3. Download some 3D screensaver if you want flashy 3D graphics that badly.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 27th 2006 1:11PM]

This is actually a really smart idea. I'm glad that sony has found a way to use the playstation to actually do something worthwhile. I'm sure it'll be nice if there's 80 million of these things cranking away at curing cancer every day. Plus, I'm sure if folding@home does cure cancer, Playstation will be happy to step it and get all the fame (partially justly so?) for curing cancer.

Crazy.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 26th 2006 10:41PM]

Lets get one thing straight, Folding@Home approached Sony not the other way around!

I am embarrased by the lack of brains of some, I have been running distributed computing applications for years and every time I check back at Folding@Home they have discovered something new, and receiving Nobel Prizes, etc.

I am sure Sony is very *proud* to say the least, and will use it as a playing card against Microsoft.. I personally have a 360 and should the PS3 have real potentional I will purchase it a year down the track, but something tells me Microsoft will come up with something similiar too.

Now stop crying about it, get the console of your choice and play .. If you are interested run Distributed Folding on your PS3 .. If not, bad luck for the future of Science.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 1st 2006 8:12PM]

I wanted to mention some details regarding protein structures. It's a highly complex molecule, and it's polar. Polarity is the cause for protein molecular fold. Since diseases or genetic disorders are primarily caused by different variety of protein folds (i.e. Primary, Seconday, Tertiary, Quartenary Structures...), it's important to determine what the shape of the molecule looks like in order to engineer a compound that will prevent the fold from happening. Mad Cow, AIDs, etc...are a result of several protein folds that interact with our body cell in a way which cause the cell to malfunction. I hope that all of you who are supporting this endeavor will continue to support us. Thank you.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 10th 2007 9:17PM]

A question why i con`t play dvd films or play ps2 games on ps3.
What i have to do???

[(Unverified) Posted May 21st 2007 9:30PM]

So if I have this on my PS3 will it affect my PS3 at all? Slow it down, affect it in a bad way?

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 12th 2007 4:26AM]

it is cool to see your ps3 due the pretty visuals but theo nly way i get it to work is when i'm on the program i think it's morel ike a program then a back ground thing

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 12th 2007 4:28AM]

update didn't see if anyone put this up before but

http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-PS3.html