PS3 Distributed Computing Project Announced

Representatives from Leland Stanford Junior University have announced the that it has reached an agreement with Sony to enable the Folding@Home distributed computing project to be run on PlayStation 3 consoles. The project is already being run by joining thousands of PCs throughout the world to aid in calculations relating to the study of protein folding and protein folding diseases. Project leaders at Stanford claim that the use of the PlayStation 3’s Cell processor will allow them to obtain performance on the 100 gigaflop scale per computer. The Cure@PS3 project will involve simulations to further study protein folding and related diseases, including Alzheimer’s Disease, Huntington's Disease and certain forms of cancer. The concept is similar to the SETI@home project which analyzes radio-telescope data to find evidence of intelligent signals from space and which has proven popular as a screen saver for PCs, with many educational establishments providing considerable cumulative processing power for the calculations. The PlayStation 3 version of the software will support advanced visualization features, displaying the folding process in real-time using technologies such as high dynamic range (HDR) lighting and ISO surface rendering. Users will also be able to navigate the 3D space of the molecule in real-time. Further information on the project, including videos of prototypes of the graphical user interface for the PlayStation 3 version can be found at the official website.