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

12:48 PM on 02.04.2008   |   Nick Chester

31 comments

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