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12:48 PM on 02.04.2008

28 comments
Sony: One million people Folding@home with the PlayStation 3
Nick Chester

Sony: One million people Folding@home with the PlayStation 3 screenshot

This isn't a knock on the Playstation 3 (in fact, this could construed as a positive thing), but there was awhile there when everyone on my PlayStation Network friends list was constantly Folding@Home. There wasn't much game playing going on, but at any given moment, someone was supporting Parkinson's, Alzeheimer's, and cancer research. 

Well, it's paid off, as Sony has announced today that since launching the PS3 version of the Stanford University Folding@home, over one million users have registered for the service. Sony says this equates to roughly 3,000 PS3 users registering for Folding@home per day, or two new registered users every minute worldwide.

"Since partnering with SCEI, we have seen our research capabilities increase by leaps and bounds through the continued participation of Folding@home users," says Vijay Pande, Assocate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University, and Folding@home project lead.

Great work, PS3 owners. I'm all for research and everything, but some of you guys might want to consider playing PixelJunk Monsters instead. That game totally rocks, but it doesn't do anything to further the cause for medical research. But if it did, I think I would have personally found the cure for cancer last week. Think about that for a second.


ONE MILLION PLAYSTATION®3 USERS PARTICPATE IN FOLDING@HOME RESEARCH PROJECT
PS3® Users Support Research Efforts of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Certain Forms of Cancer

FOSTER CITY, Calif., February 4, 2008 – Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) today announced that since PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3®) took part in Stanford University’s Folding@home™ project on March 22, 2007, the total number of registered users has reached over one million users.  This equates to roughly 3,000 PS3 users registering for Folding@home per day or 2 new registered users every minute worldwide.


“Since partnering with SCEI, we have seen our research capabilities increase by leaps and bounds through the continued participation of Folding@home users,” said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead.  “Now we have over one million PS3 users registered for Folding@home, allowing us to address questions previously considered impossible to tackle computationally, with the goal of finding cures to some of the world’s most life-threatening diseases.  We are grateful for the extraordinary worldwide participation by PS3 and PC users around the globe.”

Folding@home aims to understand protein folding and misfolding, and how these are related to diseases and many forms of cancer.  When proteins do not fold correctly, there can be serious consequences, including many well-known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

Prior to the inclusion of PS3 in March 2007, the Folding@home project leveraged the distributed computing power of personal computers from around the world.  Now a network of roughly 10,000 PS3s can accomplish the same amount of work as a network of 100,000 PCs, and have the ability to perform research simulations in weeks rather than years. In fact, it took just six months after PS3 joining Folding@home for the project to surpass a petaflops


MORE IN OUR Sony SECTION

Latest comment by JustLikeBuck |view all 28 comments
Great news! Thanks to you PS3 owners, we'll all live longer :D Unfortunately, leaving your consoles on has accelerated Global Warming. Now our grandchildren will look forward to swimming all d......




Dtoiders have posted 28 comments:

qwerty's Avatar
qwerty at 02/04/2008 12:46

Is PJM really all that? I played the demo for a bit, and while it was fun, I didn't get all that excited.
Rorschach's Avatar
Rorschach at 02/04/2008 12:55

Good for Sony. It's great to see that these little boxes can be used for something other than entertainment.
dvddesign 's Avatar
dvddesign at 02/04/2008 12:57

Dtoid folding team is #55789, just a heads up...
BS3 Owner's Avatar
BS3 Owner at 02/04/2008 13:00

Thanks for that DVDdesign!
mistic's Avatar
mistic at 02/04/2008 13:03

[i]Good for Sony. It's great to see that these little boxes can be used for something other than entertainment.[/]

no its simply the only usefull thing you can do with it ;-)
grrza's Avatar
grrza at 02/04/2008 13:15

At least someone is working on a cure for cancer.
Rainbowblack's Avatar
Rainbowblack at 02/04/2008 13:15

mistic the first whack at the pinata

EVERYBODY GETS A TURN
The GHost's Avatar
The GHost at 02/04/2008 13:35

As someone working in the field I gotta say that the whole folding @ home network is full of unadulterated win. Keep those consoles and computers humming guys, we're almost there ;)
RestingSound's Avatar
RestingSound at 02/04/2008 13:35

Poor choice of words there Nick, "There wasn't much game playing going on, but at any given moment, someone was supporting Parkinson's, Alzeheimer's, and cancer research.
Well, it's paid off," I can't be the only person who read that and thought holy crap did they find a cure for Cancer? Just getting a lot of people to join in isn't really "paying off". Anyway good for the researchers, I hope all this computing power pays off.
Crunshii's Avatar
Crunshii at 02/04/2008 14:32

dang I started playing games & stopped folding@home for a while n now dropped to 3rd place @_@!

time to fold again!
Sharpless's Avatar
Sharpless at 02/04/2008 14:51

But you shouldn't leave your console on for a long time, or it'll overheat and you'll get the red rings- Oh, wait. Oops.

P.S. I came here expecting Talledega Nights references. DESTRUCTOID, YOU HAVE FAILED ME FOR THE LAST TIME.
Crunshii's Avatar
Crunshii at 02/04/2008 15:11

Sharpless lol,

Check out the top 3 folders of Dtoid. How many hours of processing have been done by just those 3.
Qraze's Avatar
Qraze at 02/04/2008 15:18

i have said this time and time again on other sites:anyone who makes fun of f@h needs to get their ass whooped. making fun of something that goes to benefit "all of mankind" shows how much of a pos you are. i do f@h when i go to sleep, i think i'm on project 43 but i could be wrong. also, when you have a family member with alzhiemer's it hurts to see them forget who you are,it really fncking hurts and any program like this if it can treat or cure one disease, then this machine has done something "no other console" will ever be able to top. ever.nintendo won't be a part,ms won't be a part,that goes to show what they believe, nothing but making a buck.
moot button's Avatar
moot button at 02/04/2008 15:28

i was rarely using the folding program until the recent update with the automatic shut down. it usually gets put on while i'm snoozin'. not sure its doing anything, but its good to think my consumer electronics can actually do some good for the world.
Spartacus's Avatar
Spartacus at 02/04/2008 15:34

What the hell does Folding @ Home even do?
Necros's Avatar
Necros at 02/04/2008 15:41

At least some good is coming of the PS3!
The GHost's Avatar
The GHost at 02/04/2008 15:52

@Spartacus

Long story short: many drugs are designed based on the shape of a malfunctioning protein. We can currently find out what the amino acid sequence is of pretty much any protein (amino acids are the basic building blocks of proteins) but we can't easily figure out how that sequence will end up looking like in 3D. Folding @ Home program takes sequences and tries out the nearly infinite number of folding possibilities until it finds some likely candidates that can then be used by pharmacologists to design a drug. Because there are so many possibilities, and many variables need to be taken into account, a whole ton of processing power is needed and networking idle consoles and extra PC power is a very effective and cheap way of doing that. Hopefully I was clear if not feel free to say so.
Qraze's Avatar
Qraze at 02/04/2008 16:08

i believe you are right ghost. the whole folding process is over my head.i'm glad someone could describe it.
Axion22's Avatar
Axion22 at 02/04/2008 16:19

I've folded for the [H]orde for years, started back when you had to use a dual-socket motherboard to achieve "dual-core" folding.

Seriously, we should have a Destructoid Distributed Computing team. We could get some serious work done.
shmelo's Avatar
shmelo at 02/04/2008 16:26

I may fold@home, its a good cause and it shows us gamers care about the world.
Spartacus's Avatar
Spartacus at 02/04/2008 17:11

@ The Ghost

Thanks. That makes things much clearer.
Samit Sarkar's Avatar
Samit Sarkar at 02/04/2008 17:38

This is great news. While I’m not on the Destructoid F@H team (I joined the PlayStation.com Forums Team originally, and if you switch teams, your number of completed work units resets to zero), I’ve folded over 770 work units since the PS3 client was made available on March 22, 2007. Essentially, my PS3 is always on — whenever I’m not using it to play games or something, it’s folding proteins — and I’ve never had any problems with overheating or anything like that.
Corak's Avatar
Corak at 02/04/2008 17:40

Its a great program to be a part of. Granted I don't usually keep my electronics on when I'm not at home, but there have been times where I did. If theres a tv show I'm watching and not playing a game the system is on and folding away. Every little bit helps, and being this early in the program its hard to call where this could go. Wouldn't it be great if they found something that could cure or significantly reduce the effects of these diseases and you would know that you were a part of it?
MaxVest's Avatar
MaxVest at 02/04/2008 18:12

@BrOnXbOmBr21: I just joined Dtoid's team today when dvddesign dropped the code; now it makes sense why I didn't see you on the list, considering how often your status is Folding@Home. Although you are technically a traitor.

In case anyone missed it,
DTOID TEAM
55789
The GHost's Avatar
The GHost at 02/04/2008 18:28

Just wanted to drop a comment for anyone interested in learning a bit more. I did a slightly expanded post on my blog. It's still pretty short and (I hope) accessible to anyone, regardless of their background knowledge.

Good to hear that everyone is down with the sickness as it were :D.
Fading_Star's Avatar
Fading_Star at 02/04/2008 18:55

Awesome.
Qraze's Avatar
Qraze at 02/04/2008 21:49

well, the other sites reporting this have a bunch of people making fun of the program, fnck them. i'm glad to be a part of d-toid. its full of much much more mature people. thanks all. and look at joystiq: they are all super fanboys and make fun of each other all the time,and usually over nothing too. lots of trolls. thanks d-toid, this is the best site for good feedback and the d-toidcasts are good too. jim sterling is a hoot.
JustLikeBuck's Avatar
JustLikeBuck at 02/05/2008 12:13

Great news!
Thanks to you PS3 owners, we'll all live longer :D

Unfortunately, leaving your consoles on has accelerated Global Warming.

Now our grandchildren will look forward to swimming all day, and relying on Kevin Costner :|


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