PS3 Gamers, Support Folding@Home! This is Important!

Originally published on Playstation Underground Gamer Advisory Panel (GAP) 2007-03-15 13:20:

Since when has PS3 new been related to anything important? Since today, when Sony and Stanford University announced that Folding@Home would be available on the Playstation 3 by the end of March, via a firmware update which will add F@H to the list of Network-related options on the XMB.

For those of you who don’t know, Folding@Home is a protein folding simulator that uses hundreds of thousand of idle CPU’s sitting in people’s internet connected homes to perform calculations that would take even a single super computer decades to complete. The results of these simulation are used to further our understanding of how proteins work in the hopes that someday, we will be able to cure diseases caused by protein “mis foldings,” such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and even cancer!

Currently there are approximately 200,000 home PCs helping to calculate these simulations, and according to Sony, there are approx. 500,000 PS3s online. If even half of those users opted to let their idle PS3s be used for Folding@Home, that would more than double the number of processors available for the project. In addition, Sony is claiming that the Cell processor can perform at ten times the speed of a home PC. Think of the possibilities. Simulations that would have taken years to complete, can now be completed within months, even weeks.

I am urging everyone to let their Playstation 3′s run Folding@Home for as much time as possible everyday when you’re not using it. Even just letting it run for ten minutes a day could make a huge difference in the long run. We may scoff at Sony for telling us that, “The PS3 isn’t a game console, it’s a super computer,” or, “It’s an inexpensive Blu-ray player too,” just to justify the high price point, but featuring Folding@Home is not one of those things. With Folding@Home, something that you bought just for entertainment purposes could have a real impact on peoples’ lives. But it’s not going to happen by itself. We all need to do our part.

Links to More Information

This is IGN’s report on Sony’s announcement from today:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/772/772947p1.html
This one appears to be the most complete. I think if you search for PS3′s Folding@Home, you’ll pretty much find the same info.

This is the official press release:

http://www.us.playstation.com/News/PressReleases/386

and here:
http://www.us.playstation.com/News/PressReleases/387

And this is the Folding@Home Project website at Stanford:
http://folding.stanford.edu/