Sony PS3 users dominating Folding@home
Winga
MrSouth Africa Icrontian
A few days ago Short-Media reported that the Folding@home client for the Playstation 3 should be released by the end of March. Now officially announced and already firmly established, more and more PS3 users are joining the Folding project. Some very interesting statistics are already beginning to emerge showing that the PS3 as a folding client is proving to be exceedingly popular.
According to the official Folding@Home client stats page there are approximately 160,000 active Windows-based processors producing 152 Teraflops. As opposed to this, there are already 24,000 active PS3 cores producing 589 Teraflops as at the time of this posting. This number is increasing by tens of thousands every day, as evidenced each time the Folding@Home stats site updates.
Despite currently being outnumbered the Cell Broadband Engine inside each PS3 is proving to be formidable with its ability to process protein folding calculations roughly 10 times faster than standard mainstream PC chips.
Allowance for these speeds seems evident with the criteria Stanford University (the official source and origin of the Folding@Home project) has set for determining active processors. "Active CPUS are defined as those which have returned WUs within 50 days. Active GPUs are defined as those which have returned WUs within 10 days (due to the shorter deadlines on GPU WUs). Active PS3s are defined as those which have returned WUs within 2 days."
This short time period allocated to the PS3 for turning in completed work units is a very clear indication of the folding muscle these consoles actually have.
With the PS3 now officially launched in Europe and Australia, there should be a marked increase in the amount of consoles joining the ranks of folders, worldwide. The clear winner here however is the Folding@Home project and their fight for answers to the many diseases which plague us, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, as well as many cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
PS3 users are able to initiate the Folding@Home client by selecting it on the PS3's Xross Media Bar. An upgrade to the latest software version 1.60 is also needed. This can be done by accessing it on Sony’s web site or via the PlayStation 3’s system update feature.
According to the official Folding@Home client stats page there are approximately 160,000 active Windows-based processors producing 152 Teraflops. As opposed to this, there are already 24,000 active PS3 cores producing 589 Teraflops as at the time of this posting. This number is increasing by tens of thousands every day, as evidenced each time the Folding@Home stats site updates.
Despite currently being outnumbered the Cell Broadband Engine inside each PS3 is proving to be formidable with its ability to process protein folding calculations roughly 10 times faster than standard mainstream PC chips.
Allowance for these speeds seems evident with the criteria Stanford University (the official source and origin of the Folding@Home project) has set for determining active processors. "Active CPUS are defined as those which have returned WUs within 50 days. Active GPUs are defined as those which have returned WUs within 10 days (due to the shorter deadlines on GPU WUs). Active PS3s are defined as those which have returned WUs within 2 days."
This short time period allocated to the PS3 for turning in completed work units is a very clear indication of the folding muscle these consoles actually have.
With the PS3 now officially launched in Europe and Australia, there should be a marked increase in the amount of consoles joining the ranks of folders, worldwide. The clear winner here however is the Folding@Home project and their fight for answers to the many diseases which plague us, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, as well as many cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
PS3 users are able to initiate the Folding@Home client by selecting it on the PS3's Xross Media Bar. An upgrade to the latest software version 1.60 is also needed. This can be done by accessing it on Sony’s web site or via the PlayStation 3’s system update feature.
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Comments
According to Extreme Overclocking's stats, PS3 will be the #1 user with more than 50 million points in about a month.
24 hours later, another 778 machines submitted WU's. Incredible.
It's still amazing that Sony have started to support this initiative