PS3 Owners To Simulate Gene Folding

fistfullast33l writes "According to IGN UK, the next version of Playstation firmware will include a joint venture from Stanford University and Sony called Folding@Home. Similar to the infamous SETI@Home project, Folding@Home will be an idle application that participates in a simulation that 'aims to map the way that genes change shape (or fold), so they can be studied by scientists and, potentially, cure illnesses such as Parkinson's or a variety of cancers.' The application will download a 'work unit' that it will unravel to completion, update Stanford's servers, and then download the next unit and continue." We've previously discussed the client; it will be available as an update at the end of the month, and should appear on your cross-media bar once installed.

Comments

Who?

[patternmatch]

So who's Gene Folding?

Tis a shame...

[Raynor]

Usually you release distributed computing applications on computers which have a large market share... Meh, I'll be doing my part though (when i'm not playing FF-(fill in the blank))

Re:Tis a shame...

[Seumas]

So let me get this straight. I pay the energy bill for cycles used to crunch genetic mapping data that will be used by corporations to develop drugs for lifelong treatment (like they'd develop a cure when they could profit more from treatment?) so that when I'm sick, I can pay a few thousand dollars a month to afford the pills?

Just because the project is managed from a university doesn't mean the project, its goals and it's results are altruistic.

Re:Tis a shame...

[evilNomad]

Okay, so save your money, and then when you need the drug you die, too bad..

Re:Tis a shame...

[king-manic]

Academic research has a much greater chance of being widely distributed and public domain then corprate research. So someone will do it eventually. I'd prefer it to be a university who will at least share their findings thena propriatary research group which would hoard their results much tighter.

Re:Tis a shame...

[Hellkitten]

I pay the energy bill for cycles used to crunch genetic mapping data that will be used by corporations to develop drugs for lifelong treatment (like they'd develop a cure when they could profit more from treatment?) so that when I'm sick, I can pay a few thousand dollars a month to afford the pills?

For some of us that's not entirely accurate. A large number of homes around the world are heated electrically during winter. All the power you would normally use for electrical heating you could just as well run through a computer of some sort (a game console is just a specialized computer). The energy will eventually end up as heat (a cpu is just a special electrical oven that also does computations). Essentially you get the cycles for free (minus minimal wear and tear on the computer) if the computer would just sit idle and you would use that power to heat your home anyway

There are several distibuted computing projects around. Read through their policy about the use of the results, some of them may suit you.

Hmm... Folding@Home has been around forever

[bad_fx]

Yet the article and blurb seem to imply that it's a new thing.

Also, here's the info on the Folding@Home website:

http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-PS3.html

Make money this way?

[UbuntuDupe]

I was thinking recently: if I could get the credit card cycle beginning right, I could defer payment on any electricity I buy for 110 days. (55 days from first day of electricity billing cycle to due date, 55 days from beginning of credit card to its due date.) If I use it steadily for the whole month, that's on average 95 days still, or about a quarter (of a year).

So, if there were a way to convert electricity into roughly its monetary value, I could put it in a money market account for (on average) 95 days, and then keep the interest that accrued. (5% per year at today's money market rates)

So, anyone know if you can charge enough for PS3 computing cycles for this to be worth it?

Unleash the power...

[AmIAnAi]

Maybe this is the application Sony is looking for to utilise the full power of the PS3.

Genes don't fold.....

[charon_1]

proteins do..

Re:Genes don't fold.....

[Yvan256]

Paper folds too, you know. Unless it gets beaten by scissors.

Re:Genes don't fold.....

[Palshife]

Hmm, Rock will find this information useful. Yessss, very useful indeed... Your covering days are over, Paper!

Re:Cost?

[Aladrin]

Yes, and in case that isn't clear enough, you will also overheat your PS3, heat your house to the point that cooling is now necessary, and generally annoy your entire family by screaming 'no, it's folding!' when they want to play PS3.

Yeah, it somehow doesn't seem like a real great idea.

Computers seem like a good idea because we geeks tend to leave our computers 24/7 anyhow. Consoles don't get the same treatment, though.

Re:SETI, infamous?

[bigdavex]

Excepting a few debacles with people getting fired from using work computers, how could SETI be considered anything but a complete success?

They haven't found any aliens.

I think your other statements are spot on, but there it is.

Re:Infamous?

[0racle]

It's not just famous, its INfamous.

Might even be the biggest thing to come out of Mexico.

Why in a firmware update?

[MikeBabcock]

Stupid question maybe, but why would this be distributed as a firmware update and not as a downloadable 'game' from the Playstation(R)Network Store?

I can understand (and have commented before on the need for) a firmware update to add 'applications' or some such option to the XMB for non-game software, but I can't see that the software itself should require this distribution method.

Anyone able to shed light on this?

Re:Why in a firmware update?

[tapo]

I assume to get it on as many machines as possible. This also isn't the only new feature in the March 23rd update, other things - like background downloading - will also be implemented.

Re:Chromatin

[charon_1]

That is a completely different type of "folding". Protein folding is incredibly complex: "it takes about a day to simulate a nanosecond (1/1,000,000,000 of a second). Unfortunately, proteins fold on the tens of microsecond timescale (10,000 nanoseconds). Thus, it would take 10,000 CPU days to simulate folding -- i.e. it would take 30 CPU years!" Chromatin doesn't "fold" DNA, it just bundles it into compact fibers during mitosis/meiosis. The purpose of chromatin is to bundle DNA into chromosomes and also to regulate which genes are expressed, which is fairly well understood and predictable, while the folding of proteins is incredibly hard to predict.

Re:Infamous?

[fistfullast33l]

I wrote the article summary. I probably meant famous but for some reason infamous sounds better in my head. I will point out that maybe SETI@Home can be considered infamous in that so many people used it on their computers and it never really accomplished anything. It was billed as the first large-scale distributed programming project, but it probably was one of the most pointless applications ever. Not to mention I could never understand the interface or believe that you were actually doing anything. This, I can buy more into - we know how finite the human gene is.