PS3 Downtime To Fight Disease

Aerenel writes, "CNN reports that Sony has teamed up with Folding@home to use the PS3 to study how proteins are formed in the human body and how they sometimes form incorrectly. From the article: 'Donating [a gamer's] PS3's down time to researchers could help cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or mad cow disease.' PS3 users will be able to download a software package that tracks when the PS3 is not being used. While gamers are in school, at work, or asleep, their system's Cell processor can be used to perform simulations for research organizations. The PS3, due in November, has gotten serious negative press in the past few months, and this refreshing good news may win back the hearts of gamers still undecided about purchasing the system."

Comments

Not HAHA

[eldavojohn]

Well, this article is kind of a dupe but the CNN article has a lot of new information.

One of tidbits is that the researchers have to dumb down the PC distributed version so that it runs on even the slowest computer. In fact, they have to play to the lowest common denominator. With the PS3, it's standardized so they can inch out every bit of performance from the chipset. On top of that, they know there will only be on GPU so they can write the renderer for that and you'll see the protein folding on your screen. It will look all science-y and you can navigate around it. People might like this as a screen saver or conversation piece. The researchers are also hoping that it attracts people to also install it on their computers to aid in this endeavor.

Re:Not HAHA

[Anonymous Freak]

BOINC allows such a setting, but it's buried deep within the settings.

The United Devices client has it at 50% by default, and is easier to configure.

Re:Not HAHA

[Lord Crc]

One minimalistic "sleep" or "delay" into your mainloop, and whoop's , you're going to get more work done than you have ever before. Until then, nothing will fold on my machines over here.

The problem is that this won't work well for Folding@Home. It doesn't work like distributed.net where one can just assign some part of the keyspace to one client and have it work on that. The work units returned are used to generate new work units. That's why they have such "tight" deadlines. See their FAQ for details.

So for Folding@Home, you'll most likely end up past the deadline (unless you got a VERY spiffy laptop), and not helping all that much (although your work will be used for double-checking afaik).

However for other projects, distributed.net style, it would work out nicely, and I belive BOINC already has an option for this (the new F@H client might aswell, I can't remember, all my folding is done on my linux box now, and I haven't touched it in ages).

Re:Potential power costs?

[mspohr]

I guess you are exaggerating to illustrate your point but the power consumption of the PS3 is unlikely to be 500 watts (50 to 100 watts is more likely) and your power cost of 20 cents is two or three times what most people pay (I pay 10 cents in California). Your estimate is probably 10x to 20x too high.

Yes, it would cost electricity but most likely only a few dollars a month, not $750 a year and most likely wouldn't burn out the electricy grid.

Re:How the..

[kpearson]

Have you read anything about Folding@home before you started criticizing it? It is run by a public university, not a privately-held organization. The university will not profit from the research. If you can't bother to learn about the project, at least read it's FAQ.