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PS3 Helps Folding@Home Reach World Record Status

Posted by Zonk on from the look-at-me-still-talking-while-there's-science-to-do dept.

mytrip wrote with a note that the PlayStation 3 should be very proud of itself. Sony's monster-powerful console has lifted Stanford's very own distributed computing project (Folding@home) into the record books. "Guinness has apparently certified the project as the world's most powerful distributed computing system. According to a release from Sony, Folding@home topped 1 petaflop last month, meaning that it surpassed a thousand trillion floating point operations per second. By comparison, the well-known SETI@home project has topped out, according to Wikipedia, at around 265 teraflops, or 265 trillion floating point operations a second." There appears to be a team slashdot if you're looking for someone to support. Go fighting 006666!

3 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Crack BLU-RAY! by Jherek+Carnelian · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Imagine if they were to focus all those PS3's on cracking AACS keys and thus decrypting BLU-RAY movies.

    It would be the ultimate case of the hardware hand of Sony working against the hollywood hand of Sony.

  2. Neat by king-manic · · Score: 2, Interesting

    thats a neat record. As a former genetics student i can definitely appreciate the contribution to science it offers. As a PS3 owner I don't' run folding@home often for fear of burning my house down. The PS3 is very quiet but gets a bit warm after 3h of folding@home.

    --
    "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
    1. Re:Neat by wildsurf · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't run Folding@Home on my PS3 for two reasons. First, because their boneheaded screensaver locks out AutoPlay on CD's! My PS3 doubles as a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray player for my living room, and it's ridiculous to have to turn on my TV to navigate the menus whenever I pop in a CD; I just want the damn thing to start playing. Second, it would be nice if Folding had the option to automatically run at night only, so it would only use power at off-peak hours, and incidentally help heat my house at night. :-) I get cheaper electricity at off-peak hours anyway, and the PS3 hoovers electrons like they're going out of style. (SonyStyle?)

      --
      Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.