Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

[Pai Pai Master]

Folding@Home is a distributed computing project created by Stanford University to allow anybody with access to a PC a chance to contribute to important research which can lead finding cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease, Cancer, Parkinson's Disease, and more.
Basically, anyone can download the Folding@Home client and devote their PC's resources to performing calculations, uploading the results to Stanford's database.

Yesterday, the PS3 received its Firmware 1.6 update, which, in addition to other neato additions such as background downloading (finally -.-), allows PS3 owners to download a specifically designed Folding@Home client created by Stanford and Sony Computer Entertainment. The new software takes advantage of the CELL Broadband Engine's powerful computing resources and the growing install base of PLAYSTATION 3 owners. Now, literally anyone who owns a PS3 system can download the software and run calculations on their console for Stanford. The increased awareness of the project as well as the increased computational power thanks to the PS3 system should increase the effectiveness of Stanford's great work so far.







To learn more about the Folding@Home project, check out folding.stanford.edu.

[Eohmer]

Re: Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

Wow, that's pretty cool.

Man I want a PS3.

[Pai Pai Master]

Re: Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

Go buy one so you can help science!

[Minimee]

Re: Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

maybe we should start a folding@home team? im not in any teams atm.

[Pai Pai Master]

Re: Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

Sure thing! I'll get on that now.
EDIT: Folding@FFXIonline.com Team has been created.
Just enter number "55242" when you select the "Join Team" option during Folding@Home.

[Eohmer]

Re: Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

Go buy one so you can help science!

I would if I had the gil.

I mean money. :-P

[eticket109]

Re: Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

I did the SETI thing for a while. I never got into Folding. Its a cool project though.

[KoukiRyu]

Re: Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

I just joined the FFXIOnline team and I'm folding now. :]

What's SETI btw eticket?

[Minimee]

Re: Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

im on the ffxionline folding team =)

[eticket109]

Re: Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

I just joined the FFXIOnline team and I'm folding now. :]
What's SETI btw eticket?

Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. It's run out of UCBerkley

It works essentially the same way Folding does. Essentially you download a signature from one of the big radio telescopes and analyze it to determine if there is any data that indicates any intelligent life etc. The stuff runs in the background much like the pc based Folding program. They've been gathering analysis from home PC users since 1999 since there's no way for them to process all of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI

Folding is probably a more noble cause, but I'm a space geek so I got pulled into the SETI thing back in 2001 or so. I haven't done anything for them in a couple years though.

[Macht]

Re: Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

Hmm, that's intresting. Something to look at when I get home. Pretty cool that a console would dedicate it's power for such things.

[Feba]

Re: Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

Can the FFXIonline team be joined by PC users?

I'm planning on installing some form of BOINC program once I get my shiny new PC, i'd join this if possible.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

SFolding is probably a more noble cause, but I'm a space geek so I got pulled into the SETI thing back in 2001 or so. I haven't done anything for them in a couple years though.

If I remember correctly, cosmologist rely on two fundamental assumptions:

1. The universe is roughly the same on the large scale, in any direction you look at.
2. No place (including the the Earth's neighborhood) is special.

The corollary is that we should expect life exists in every direction in the heavens, and many of them at least as "advanced" as we are.

If SETI returns a positive result, it would be a major evidence for those fundamental cosmological assumptions, in my view. Even a null result could be significant as well, and possibly have more impact on cosmology.

Is there anything more noble than a pursuit of the universal truth? ^_^b

p.s. I'm not a space geek.

[Minimee]

Re: Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

yes pc users can join the team. use the same team number when you sign up and install. 55242 is the team number.

[WishMaster3K]

Re: Folding@Home Now Available for PS3!

Definitely something for PCs and PS3s to do other than just the normal Idle process.

I was doing folding@home last year with my roomate, but then my comp started getting all Dell on me and it became impossible for me to do it. I might revisit the cause tho, because aside from FFXI, I'm usually at class.