PS3 Folding@home Successful, Updated
Since its release one month ago, Folding@home on the PS3 has been hugely successful. According to SCE, the project has seen Stanford University’s distributed computing project more than double its processing power, with PS3 owners delivering nearly 400 teraflops, achieving a total computing power of 700 teraflops at a single moment.
“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.”
To further this cause, SCE has updated the Folding@home application to further enhance the user experience. The updated software features improvements in folding calculation speeds, increased visibility of user location on the globe and the ability for users to create longer donor or team names.
SCE plans to continue to support distributed computing projects in a wide variety of academic fields such as medical and social sciences through the PS3.