Folding@home considered a success, more PS3 distributed computing programs in development

Are you one of the 250,000+ Playstation 3 owners that use your Playstation 3 for Folding@home? If so congratulations! (if not why?) Playstation 3 users have contributed more than double the computing capacity of the project, nearly 400 teraflops of additional computing power. Sony Computer Entertainment has an update for Folding@home tomorrow that improves calculation speeds, allows larger team names and increased visibility of user location through your IP address. The work so far has made significant impact in Stanford University’s project as Vijay Pande Associate Professor of Chemistry and the program lead of Folding@home explains.

“The PS3 turnout has been amazing, greatly exceeding our expectations and allowing us to push our work dramatically forward. 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.”

Folding@home was the first distributed computing project SCE developed for the Playstation 3, but more projects are in the pipeline.

Starting with Folding@home, SCE will continue to support distributed computing projects in a wide variety of academic fields such as medical and social sciences and environmental studies through the use of PS3 and hopes to contribute to the advancement of science.

Kudos go to Sony for using the power of the Playstation 3 for academic research, the pursuit of knowledge and LittleBigPlanet.