In a somewhat altruistic move, Sony has struck a partnership with Folding@home, a distributed computing project, similar to the well-known SETI program. Both use a small segment of a processor,s leftover power for number crunching. Only instead of searching for for signals of grey men in the sky, this project uses the crunching process to stimulate protein folding, something which may eventually hold the key to curing cancer.
The project is run by chemists at Stanford University and was launched in 2000. So far only 200,000 computers are running the application. By ensuring the program will run on Sony’s latest console, Folding@home will not only greatly benefit from Cell,s high processing power, but also from the high adoption rate the PS3 will have worldwide. Both these factors are expected to exponentially speed up the research. The console,s RSX graphic ship will be used to breathe some life in the stone-cold data by transforming it into lovely real-time models of the simulated folding process. The Folding folks are so excited about the potential boom that they are already thinking of expanding the project in an effort to cure other diseases, such as Huntingtons and Alzheimers.
So if anyone ever tells you that gaming only leads to destructive behaviour, you,ll have a nice counter-argument ready. Just say something along the lines of "Dad, while I’m killing these polygons, I’m also potentially saving millions of real lives!"
Eager to help out already? Then why not lend humanity a hand by downloading the PC application now?
