PlayStation 3's science project: Folding@Home

Stephen Withers
Friday, 16 March 2007 01:44

Your IT - Home IT

PlayStation 3 owners will soon be able to participate in Folding@Home, a distributed computing project from Stanford University that simulates the way proteins fold. Scientists hope the results will contribute to the prevention or cure of diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's.

This type of simulation requires the same calculations to be performed on large quantities of data. Client systems receive a chunk of data from the server via the Internet, process it while they are not being used for other purposes, and then return the results to the server and request more data. The Cell Processor used in the PlayStation 3 is particularly well suited to certain types of computation needed for Folding@Home.

The PS3 client will be available later this month as a firmware upgrade from Sony. It will provide a 3D visual representation of the simulation in real time, with the point-of-view adjustable via the game controller.

Work is also being done to harness the power of ATI graphics processing units.

Taken together, the two developments will reduce simulation times from years to months or even weeks. According to project founder Associate Professor Vijay Pande, the participation of 10,000 PS3 owners would double the processing power of the 200,000 PCs currently crunching numbers for researchers.

Since the software is being backed by Sony, it seems reasonable that participation rates may be higher than among PC owners.

The best known distributed processing project is SETI@home, which analyses data from radiotelescopes looking for signs of intelligent life in space.