Sony
Computer Entertainment has announced that
Stanford
University's Folding@home project has clocked up over a million registered
users since the PlayStation 3 took part in March 2007.
This equates to roughly 3,000 PS3 users registering for Folding@home per day,
or two new registered users every minute worldwide.
Folding@home makes use of the distributed computing power of personal
computers and PS3s from around the world.
The network of roughly 10,000 PS3s can accomplish the same amount of work as
an average network of 100,000 PCs, and has the ability to perform research
simulations in weeks rather than years.
It took just six months after PS3 joined for the project to surpass the
petaflop computing milestone that had never been reached before by a distributed
computing network.
Folding@home was recognised by
Guinness
World Records in September 2007 as the world's most powerful distributed
computing network.
Sony said that PS3 users make up approximately 74 per cent of the total
petaflop computing power of the Folding@home project.
"Since partnering with Sony, 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 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, and many cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
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