Playstation 3 Doubles Folding@Home Output!

I recently wrote about how you could put your spare computer time to good use by taking part in the Folding@Home project and that Playstation 3 owners could now harness the idle computing power of their new “beast” of a console by running Folding@Home software.

PS3s may not be selling as well as expected, but many of those PS3’s sold have now joined in this project, GameDailyBiz have reported that Stanford University (who run this programme) have announced that the total computing power being utilised in this good cause has now been doubled!

Since the program was launched on the PS3 a little over a month ago, more than 250,000 unique PS3 users have registered; users are delivering nearly 400 teraflops, achieving a total computing power of over 700 teraflops at a single moment; and a “halo-effect” from the PS3 has been observed as the number of active PCs has increased by 20 percent in the last month.

“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.”

Further increases are now expected when the PS3 software is updated to v1.1 which will improve the already impressive folding calculation speeds.

If you wish to take part in this worthwhile project either using your PC or your PS3, then you can check out Connected Internet who have a team set up called ‘Bloggers United’ that you can join.