PlayStation 3 tackles world ills

From BBC NEWS.

The spare processing power of Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) will be harnessed by scientists trying to understand the cause of diseases like Alzheimer's.

Sony has teamed up with US biologists who already run the distributed computing project, folding@home (FAH).

The project harnesses the capacity of thousands of PCs to examine how the shape of proteins, critical to most biological functions, affect disease.

FAH say a network of PS3's will allow performance similar to supercomputers.

With 10,000 machines joined together the researchers calculate they should be able to do a thousand trillion calculations per second.

If that was achieved it would be nearly four times as fast as the world's most powerful supercomputer, IBM's BlueGene/L System, capable of 280.6 trillion calculations per second.

Complex problems

Distributed computing is a way of solving large complex problems by dividing them between many computers.

The Cell's hard sell

Volunteers download a piece of software that uses their PC or PS3's processing power when it is idle.

In this way small packets of data can be crunched by individual machines, before being automatically fed back over the internet to a central computer where all of the results can be viewed together.

The method is already used by scientists examining millions of simulations of how malaria spreads to look for ways to control the disease.

Other groups are searching through thousands of hours of radio telescope signals for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Biological processes

The FAH uses distributed computing to examine protein folding and how it maybe linked to diseases. The way in which proteins contort underpins almost every biological process.

When they do not fold correctly they can cause diseases such as Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many cancers.

Scientists still do not entirely understand how or why this process occurs.

To try to gain a better understanding, scientists need to simulate the complex folding process.

However, although a fold may take just ten millionths of a second (10 microseconds) in the body, it takes far longer to simulate on a computer.

An average PC would take all day just to simulate just one billionth of a second (one nanosecond) of protein folding, and 10,000 days to simulate a complete fold.

Dividing the problem up allows the researchers to speed through many more simulations.

Advanced gaming

The scientists hope the arrival of the PS3 will take this research up another level.

Sony has demonstrated a piece of protein-folding software that will run on its PS3 when it is launched in November.

The PS3 has a powerful processor known as a "cell", which will run up to 10 times faster than current PC chips.

A graphical interface, also being developed between Sony and FAH, will eventually allow users and the scientists to look at the protein from different angles as it folds in real-time.

The new interface takes advantage of the PS3's graphics chip, designed for advanced gaming.

The graphics application is currently undergoing tests and is expected to be finished by September.

When the program is released to PS3 owners, the scientists say they will be able to "address questions previously considered impossible to tackle computationally".

Quite an impressive idea that, kudos to Sony for doing some inventive and worthwhile with the PS3.

SETI was the first thing that hit my mind when I read this. Sony actually doing something good! Whoda thunk it!

So how much money does Sony make out of this then?

This will be good PR for Sony.

So how many of these will count towards Sony's 4 million sales prediction?

Mr. T said:
If that was achieved it would be nearly four times as fast as the worlds most powerful supercomputer

Get ready for Disk Read Errors in labs...

Matthew Gastrian Evans said:
So how many of these will count towards Sonys 4 million sales prediction?

Megadanxzero said:

Mr. T said:If that was achieved it would be nearly four times as fast as the worlds most powerful supercomputer

At only 25 times the cost! Get ready for Disk Read Errors in labs...

crazylurch said:
This will be good PR for Sony.

The cynical side of me thought this aswell, fair play if it does do what it's supposed to do but as a rule of thumb no company will do anything good unless it somehow benifits them and this should certainly remove some of the laughable enemy crab press they've been getting.

There was a similar thing done with a glbal warming programme that ran on people's PCs and the collective data acted like a supercomputer. I never saw the outcome of it though.

stucorbs said:
There was a similar thing done with a glbal warming programme that ran on peoples PCs and the collective data acted like a supercomputer. I never saw the outcome of it though.

Yeah that climate change program program from the BBC. I downloaded that and used it as they said 'it will run in the background and you will not notice it is there'

Well I did fucking notice. My computer took me about 30 times longer to load up and there was a pause everytime I clicked on something on the internet. So I was one of the evil people who deleted the program and destroyed my results. Not notice it my arse!

crazylurch said:

stucorbs said:There was a similar thing done with a glbal warming programme that ran on peoples PCs and the collective data acted like a supercomputer. I never saw the outcome of it though.

Yeah that climate change program program from the BBC. I downloaded that and used it as they said it will run in the background and you will not notice it is thereWell I did fucking notice. My computer took me about 30 times longer to load up and there was a pause everytime I clicked on something on the internet. So I was one of the evil people who deleted the program and destroyed my results. Not notice it my arse!

o/\o Same here, computer slowed to a crawl. Global warming is a small price to pay for faster laoding times.

Sony helping people?

A graphical interface, also being developed between Sony and FAH, will eventually allow users and the scientists to look at the protein from different angles as it folds in real-time.

However, although a fold may take just ten millionths of a second (10 microseconds) in the body, it takes far longer to simulate on a computer.

I probably misread/misinterpreted something, but I thought it was kinda funny.

"Mommy! I'm gonna watch the protein fold in realy in a few minutes!"
"Um...okay."

*countdown*
"5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0! Okay, it's done now. Thank you for helping us understand protein folding. Have a nice day."
"What? What in the $@&%*! happened?!"

I only just noticed this:

The PS3 has a powerful processor known as a "cell", which will run up to 10 times faster than current PC chips.