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250,000 PS3s Folding@Home
GamesIndustry.biz reports that over 250,000 users have signed up for the Folding@Home project on the PlayStation 3. The sheer number of users has resulted in '700 teraflops in a single moment', most of which is provided by PS3 users. "'The PS3 turnout has been amazing, greatly exceeding our expectations and allowing us to push our work dramatically forward,' said Vijay Pande, associate professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home program lead. 'Thanks to PS3, we have performed simulations in the first few weeks that would normally take us more than a year to calculate. We are now gearing up for new simulations that will continue our current studies of Alzheimer's and other diseases.'" The article notes the software has a new update with some refined functionality and faster processing.
I guess it is at least useful to society
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Why not just put the entire article in the summary?
but I thought this was supposed to be a video game console? Where are the games? Perhaps Sony's PR machine can tackle that one.
Of course the PS3s are spending the time doing Folding@Home.
It's not like there's any games to play on them.
Tried it but couldn't get past the first boss level.
[Insert pithy quote here]
According to the folding@home OS stats page, a total of 99712 PS3s contributed as of 25 Apr 2007. Where did the 250,000 come from?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
According to this page, they are at about 691 teraflops with the PS3 producing 388 of those. I'm kinda confused on where they get the 250,000 number as that page also says there are about 30,000 active CPUs and about 100,000 total (as in 70,000 CPUs once participated but haven't returned data in five days). I mean, there's barely 250,000 total active CPUs including all platforms.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
What a shame - all those PS3's, and not a single decent game to play on them.
A similar question is how long until PS3 owners lose interest in this? F@H has been around a lot longer than the PS3. I've been running it on my PCs for a couple years now off and on, but are gamers going to keep leaving their machines on at night once the novelty and "my machine is helping cure cancer, how about yours?" wears off?
Insert Sig Here
I should pick up a PS3 so I can play it.
LOL all those M$ fanboys dont even know about this HOT ESCLUSIVE TITAL!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
PS3 owners can set F@H and other Dist apps due later on to run any time to unit is idle, be it for 10 mins or constant. Becuase it only takes around 8 hours (1.0) to crunch a unit they dont need to leave it on as long to do the same work as a PC would so 10 mins here and there would add up quickly.
Best laundry sim on the market.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Considering the fact that running it 24/7 uses 144 kWh per month (200 W x 24 hrs x 30 day) I'd be pretty wary myself.
Even at a generous 10 cents/kWh (the US national avg), that's almost $15/month.
If you are unfortunate enough to live where electricity is much higher than that, you are closer to $25
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
It's called turning it off, and helping do your little bit to cut CO2 emissions and cutting your electricity bill at the same time!
Doesn't Sony know? Curing cancer is so last century, this century it's all about carbon emissions.
The PS3 barely puts out any heat when folding. I was surprised when I checked it in the morning and it was completely cool and not blowing out much heat. For perspective, when playing a game, the hot air coming out feels like my car's exhaust. The actual system stays pretty cool, though, which is a tribute to their cooling methods.
It shouldn't be too surprising that the GPU would be the most energy hungry component... That's how it is in PCs too.
A $180 check to the Alzheimer's foundation would be $15 a month to cure Alzheimer's, and it has the further benefits of:
A) letting the foundation pay for whatever research it feels is most important, which might include the folding@home project but might not (or, if you specify with your donation, could possibly go to the project of your choice);
B) does not necessarily consume electricity at residential rates using many, many distributed lossy AC->DC conversions, which for most people means additional cost cooling one's house in the summer and an overall increase in greenhouse gas emissions;
C) would be tax deductible, so depending on your tax bracket you could donate $200-$225 to this cause, reducing the amount of money you give the government to pay for whatever it wants, but further increasing the amount of money going to research you want.
Alzheimer's runs in my family, and keeping a computer running at my home all day is a stupid way to cure it. The only possible benefit is that it hides the cost in the electric bill instead of making people write out a check. That would be silly but harmless if that electricity wasn't polluting the atmosphere.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
You mean Sony has actually sold 250,000 PS3s? ;) (I kid, I kid, notice the winking smiley, please don't flame me :()
a very good use of the PS3's spare processing power, and disease research is much more worthwhile than looking for aliens
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