PS3 network enters record books

hamba

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PS3 network enters record books

A project that harnesses the spare processing power of Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) to help understand the cause of diseases has entered the record books.

Guinness World Records has recognised folding@home (FAH) as the world's most powerful distributed computing network.

FAH has signed up nearly 700,000 PS3s to examine how the shape of proteins affect diseases such as Alzheimer's.

The network has more than one petaflop of computing power - the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

"To have folding@home recognized by Guinness World Records as the most powerful distributed computing network ever is a reflection of the extraordinary worldwide participation by gamers and consumers around the world and for that we are very grateful," said Professor Vijay Pande of Stanford University and a leader of the FAH project.

Disease link

Distributed computing is a method for solving large complex problems by dividing them between many computers.


CELL SPECS
256 billion calculations per second
2.5MB of on-chip memory
Able to shuttle data to and from off-chip memory at speeds up to 100 gigabytes per second,
234 million transistors



They harness the idle processing power of computers to crunch small packets of data, which are then fed back over the internet to a central computer.
The technique has been used by several groups to study everything from how malaria spreads to searching for new cancer drugs.

One of the most high profile projects is seti@home, which uses computer cycles to search through thousands of hours of radio telescope signals for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence.

FAH uses distributed computing to examine protein folding and how it maybe linked to diseases.

Proteins that do not fold correctly have been implicated in diseases such as Alzheimer's, Huntingdon's, BSE and many cancers.

Speed test

Until March this year, FAH only ran on PCs.

The program had around 200,000 computers participating in the program, the equivalent of about 250 teraflops (trillion calculations per second).

The addition of 670,000 PS3s has taken the computing power of the network to more than one petaflop.

By comparison BlueGene L, which tops the list of most powerful supercomputers, has a top speed of just 280.6 teraflops.

The boost is in part because of the PS3's powerful processor, known as the "cell", which runs up to 10 times faster than current PC chips.

"It is clear that none of this would be even remotely possible without the power of PS3, it has increased our research capabilities by leaps and bounds," said Prof Pande.







Story from BBC NEWS:
Published: 2007/11/02 10:41:07 GMT
© BBC MMVII
 
wonder how many other projects and device networks will be looked at now...

cant fault them, its a brilliant idea
 
i know its all for a good cause and that, but how many PS3 owners are aware that while they are not using their machine, somebody else is? it must be tucked away in small print somewhere that by powering up the console you give your permission for this 3rd party to send and recieve data to and from your connection

just a thought
 
at least the ps3 is good at something lol

Cheers
MFCGAVMFC
 
lol, u took the words out of my mouth mate :)

I'd think that the cell sharing stuff would have an option to disable it, I don't fancy having my CPU churning away working out protein patterns for the sick when it could be churning out glorious graphincs for me! ;)
 
Wow my PS3 is good for something other than people thinking its a George Foreman Grilling machine.
 
lol didnt think that it looked like a goerge foreman grill machine till now hehe thats funny.

i think the idea of networking of this sort is awesome trouble is if i'm struck with an illness will they help me for participating.. mr brown is closing my local A&E.. can PS3 do something about that? nope.
 
This is very similar to SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). which has been running for years using very similar methods.

I'd rather the technology was used for the benefit of mankind first, rather than discovering if there are little green men wandering around some distant planetary system.

Wonder why they didn't put this to use sooner?

Hopefully they are able to obtain some useful information from this, and then maybe turn it towards finding a cure for the big C.
 
you can easily switch it off in the options and even delete the FAH software. I switched it off straight away when i realised how much power it was using every day and it was also worrying about the amount of heat the ps3 was pushing out.

It didn't take someone long to work out how to hack the FAH as now it's a great way to get games into the PS3 for free.

Regards.
 
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