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250,000 PS3s Folding@Home

Posted by Zonk on Wed Apr 25, 2007 01:38 PM
from the that's-a-lot-of-origami dept.
PlayStation (Games) Science
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.
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story

Related Stories

[+] PS3 Folding@Home Begins with Impressive Numbers 114 comments
hansamurai writes "As we've previously discussed, the Folding@Home client is now available on the PS3, and already some early results are in. The total number of teraflops generated by PS3s has already exceeded all other OS contributions combined and the entire project is heading towards one petaflop of distributed computing power. Stanford notes that their teraflops calculation is conservatively calculated so the total power could be under-appreciated. With the PS3 European release complete and the Folding client already available to them, the number of users will continue to grow for the time being, let's hope that the project does not run out of work units to pass out. Kotaku has some numbers that are a few hours old since the Stanford server is getting hit pretty hard with the renewed interest in the project."
[+] Sony Claims One Million PS3s Sold in EU / AU 67 comments
GamesIndustry.biz reports that one million PlayStation 3s have been sold in the European and Australian markets. This breaks the record for Sony console sales in those sectors, as they've reached that number in only nine and half weeks. "Although released in Japan in November last year, the console has so far sold just under a million in the region, with 910,737 units sold, according to data from Media Create. The last hardware sales figures released by NPD in April showed that PS3 sales had reached over 1.3 million units in North America. According to Sony, Resistance: Fall of Man has sold 600,000 units in Europe, with MotorStorm reaching just over 500,000 sales."
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  • $500+ .... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pembo13 (770295) on Wednesday April 25 2007, @01:41PM (#18873709) Homepage
    I guess it is at least useful to society

    • 250,000+ with nothing better to do? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Moryath (553296) on Wednesday April 25 2007, @01:53PM (#18873909)
      What a shame - all those PS3's, and not a single decent game to play on them.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by empaler (130732)
        As much as I dislike Sony, I can't agree with you.

        Yeah, maybe they got some free publicity from making it possible to join Folding@home, but do you honestly believe that that's a negative thing?
        I think it's amazing that they've actually leveraged that amount of computing power into a project that so sorely needed a boost. I think it's amazing that they F@h people now have to up their ante to keep up.
        Hell, Sony could probably get a little more Goodwill-publicity squeezed out of the thing if they gave some k

          • Re:$500+ .... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Applekid (993327) on Wednesday April 25 2007, @03:37PM (#18875567)
            "This is scientific research that will eventually be patented..."

            Um... from the FAQ [stanford.edu]:

            Who "owns" the results? What will happen to them? Unlike other distributed computing projects, Folding@home is run by an academic institution (specifically the Pande Group, at Stanford University's Chemistry Department), which is a nonprofit institution dedicated to science research and education. We will not sell the data or make any money off of it.

            Moreover, we will make the data available for others to use. In particular, the results from Folding@home will be made available on several levels. Most importantly, analysis of the simulations will be submitted to scientific journals for publication, and these journal articles will be posted on the web page after publication. Next, after publication of these scientific articles which analyze the data, the raw data of the folding runs will be available for everyone, including other researchers, here on this web site.
              • Ummm. You don't have to buy any drugs that are produced. Would you rather get alzheimer's and be told there is no cure, or told there is a cure, and it will cost $10,000? In any case, patents only last for 20 years, and after that, the drugs should become relatively cheap. Additionally, this folding at home work is just the start of the process. It is one thing to know how a particular folded protein might cause a disease, and creating a drug to fix it.
                • By then, everyone will probably have forgotten about this project.
                  • They're not really just "turning around and selling the product." Even defining a specific target for a drug, the drug still has to be developed and put through the approval process. There's a lot of work between this sort of basic research and an actual product.

  • Why bother linking to the article? (Score:3, Informative)

    by HockeyPuck (141947) on Wednesday April 25 2007, @01:42PM (#18873719)
    The only information NOT in the summary is this tiny paragraph:

    The project is also making a new software update available. The 1.1 version improves visibility of donor locations on the globe, folding calculation speed and protein viewing. There's also additional language support, help screen hints, and improved donor-name length and character handling.

    Users can join the program by clicking on the Folding@home icon in the PS3 CrossMediaBar (XMB), or setting the application to run whenever the console is idle.


    Why not just put the entire article in the summary?
    • I would say it is because the originating site wrote the article. If Slashdot put the entire article in the summary, people wouldn't click on the link. That does nothing for Slashdot and annoys the originator since they don't get any credit.
  • 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.
    • Maybe Sony's using this as a sort 'pay as you go' system. They've realised most people can't afford the console so they're letting people slowly pay them off by donating a portion of their time to scientific research... 'Woo hoo! Only 700 more hours of calorich pragmastiscism indexing and I can totally play some Fight Night! But only for 10 minutes.. The University of Leakston's reserved my processor for some research on abscract non-contuitive phasing for the next 2 months'

  • Of course they're folding... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2007, @01:42PM (#18873729)
    Of course the PS3s are spending the time doing Folding@Home.

    It's not like there's any games to play on them.
    • I know you were (half-) joking, but I wonder if we'll see drops once popular PS3 games ship (think Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, etc).

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by TB (7206)
        No, I wasnt. In places like Australia, PS3 is doing well in the charts, often with 2 titles in the top 3. Almost a million people bought PS3s in March alone.
      • Don't feed the trolls. There's a whole bunch of people out there who want to believe that several million units sold is equivalent to zero and that comparing 360 sales to PS3 sales is fair without considering the 360's full one-year lead.

        This is Sony we're talking about -- God of War was not made by a third party, and Insomniac is working on another Ratchet & Clank, not to mention the existing games. I'm hoping Sony works out offering decent music & movie sales soon, but there's no reason to malig
        • You don't even have to look at the grand scheme of things to realize that $100 isn't a big difference in price.

          I think the PS3 is a fine console. It's the first Sony console I've owned and I haven't been disappointed one bit. It's really nice; it's too bad some folks can't see beyond their own ignorance. (I guess that's the definition of ignorance..)
        • The thing that irritates me about F@H on the PS3 is that it stops background downloads when it's running. When new game demos come out, I usually just start the download before I go to bed. After it finishes downloading, it's just sitting there.

  • Difficult (Score:5, Funny)

    by rlp (11898) on Wednesday April 25 2007, @01:45PM (#18873773)
    Tried it but couldn't get past the first boss level.

  • A small disparity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by heinousjay (683506) on Wednesday April 25 2007, @01:47PM (#18873819) Journal
    According to the folding@home OS stats page [stanford.edu], a total of 99712 PS3s contributed as of 25 Apr 2007. Where did the 250,000 come from?

  • 250,000? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hansamurai (907719) <hansamurai@gmail.com> on Wednesday April 25 2007, @01:50PM (#18873857) Homepage Journal
    According to this page [stanford.edu], 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.
  • I should pick up a PS3 so I can play it.

    LOL all those M$ fanboys dont even know about this HOT ESCLUSIVE TITAL!

  • Folding@home (Score:5, Funny)

    by mypalmike (454265) on Wednesday April 25 2007, @02:18PM (#18874311) Homepage
    Best laundry sim on the market.
  • I know some (myself included) are wary of just running it 24/7. It'd be nice to have an option to have it do one WU then shut the PS3 off. My first PS3 locked up after a few days of folding and I had to exchange it. Now I'm wary of folding for more than a day or two without powering it down. Probably just a bum PS3 in the first place but... yeah.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by MarkGriz (520778)

      I know some (myself included) are wary of just running it 24/7.


      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
        • I wonder how much a solar panel setup would cost that would power a PS3. You would want to bypass the DC->AC->DC conversion, of course.

        • Re:Requested feature (Score:5, Insightful)

          by SydShamino (547793) on Wednesday April 25 2007, @04:06PM (#18876035)
          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.
            • Certainly, your mileage may vary. My home is powered from solar and wind only; for every consumer who has made such a choice, folding@home is (as I said) silly but harmless. I absolutely agree that many people would rather pay a lot more each month on their utility bill than write one check, once a year, because overall most people are lazy.

              The problem is that there is a high correlation between people who don't bother to switch to clean energy, and those who won't bother to write out a check. There are

  • Better idea for PS3 idle time... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Xest (935314) * on Wednesday April 25 2007, @03:05PM (#18875009)
    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.
  • 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

    • Re:What is going to happen...? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shoptroll (544006) on Wednesday April 25 2007, @01:55PM (#18873935)
      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?

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by TB (7206)
        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.
        • I heard they're planning on selling out the network of users to any company willing to have them crunch numbers. No word on whether or not people are gonna be reimbursed for the time/electricity/bandwidth for this.
        • The bloody thing costs $400 off of EBAY, and you're trying to tell me the electricity cost will matter?

          Uh. Yeah. For people who can add at least. I posted this on /. before:

          The PS3 is reported to run 220W when running folding@home.

          In, for example, New York, the average residential cost of power in 2006 was 16.86 cents: (http://www.ppinys.org/reports/jtf/electricprices. html)

          So 220W or 0.22kW x .1686 $/kWh x 24h/day x 365days/year is: $324.93 per year.

          That kind of money would buy you quite a few new games o

    • Re:This is not "free" (Score:5, Informative)

      by DrEldarion (114072) on Wednesday April 25 2007, @03:19PM (#18875271) Homepage
      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.

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