From the Inquirer at: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38270

SONY SAYS IT WILL add a button to the Network Menu on its PS3 to enourage users to connect to Stanford University's Folding@home programme.

Or users can optionally set the application to run automatically whenever PS3 is idle, it annnouced last night.

Folding@home is a distributed computing project attempting to broaden the understanding of protein folding, misfolding which can cause diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis and many cancers.

In its announcement Sony claims its Cell chippery is "roughly 10 times faster than a standard mainstream chip inside a personal computer."

An associate professor of chemistry at Stanford University said he was "thrilled" to welcome Sony to the, um, fold.

From the Inquirer at: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38270

SONY SAYS IT WILL add a button to the Network Menu on its PS3 to enourage users to connect to Stanford University's Folding@home programme.

Or users can optionally set the application to run automatically whenever PS3 is idle, it annnouced last night.

Folding@home is a distributed computing project attempting to broaden the understanding of protein folding, misfolding which can cause diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis and many cancers.

In its announcement Sony claims its Cell chippery is "roughly 10 times faster than a standard mainstream chip inside a personal computer."

An associate professor of chemistry at Stanford University said he was "thrilled" to welcome Sony to the, um, fold

here is a story also...............http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13164

If you look back in the neighborhood of a month prior to the release of the PS3, there were several mentions of the PS3 being used for F@H; along with mention of the fact that F@H is running the GPU client on ATI x1900+ cards.
The threads usually included a request for why Rosetta and/or Boinc wasn't setup to use GPU clients or ready to use the PS3. :)

Pretty neat to see DC apps moving onto new platforms. :)

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Understood that most of this is old news. Really was just trying to point out

SONY SAYS IT WILL add a button to the Network Menu on its PS3 to enourage users to connect to Stanford University's Folding@home programme.

ala the way the old Google toolbar (?) made it easy to sign up for distributed computing.

Maybe DB can get "real friendly" with BG, and Rosetta can get its own "button" in Vista sp 1...

@rochester new york - thanx for link!

If you look back in the neighborhood of a month prior to the release of the PS3, there were several mentions of the PS3 being used for F@H; along with mention of the fact that F@H is running the GPU client on ATI x1900+ cards.
The threads usually included a request for why Rosetta and/or Boinc wasn't setup to use GPU clients or ready to use the PS3. :)

Pretty neat to see DC apps moving onto new platforms. :)

Understood that most of this is old news. Really was just trying to point out

SONY SAYS IT WILL add a button to the Network Menu on its PS3 to enourage users to connect to Stanford University's Folding@home programme.

ala the way the old Google toolbar (?) made it easy to sign up for distributed computing.

Maybe DB can get "real friendly" with BG, and Rosetta can get its own "button" in Vista sp 1...

@rochester new york - thanx for link!

If you look back in the neighborhood of a month prior to the release of the PS3, there were several mentions of the PS3 being used for F@H; along with mention of the fact that F@H is running the GPU client on ATI x1900+ cards.
The threads usually included a request for why Rosetta and/or Boinc wasn't setup to use GPU clients or ready to use the PS3. :)

Pretty neat to see DC apps moving onto new platforms. :)

my PS3 is already loud ... I don t think i ll do this! when i play, it gets really louder, i guess, folding will make it too.

who?

but your ps3 is only going to crunch when you do not play, which means that it will not be noisier while you play. it might even be quite silent during your gaming breaks. quietly crunching...

keep us tuned of your results please.

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Wow, this is *very* cool. Congrats to F@H! Good press for DC projects in general. I wish I had an option to do this with Rosie...

Wow, this is *very* cool. Congrats to F@H! Good press for DC projects in general. I wish I had an option to do this with Rosie...

If you read Sony's release you can see that they left the door open to other projects in the future, so perhaps they will build a link to BOINC. That would rule.

How many PS3s are there projected to exist in the next few years? Has anyone seen sales figures?

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How many PS3s are there projected to exist in the next few years? Has anyone seen sales figures?

Nevermind, I answered my own question: 1 million in North America so far...

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Has there been any answer as to why Rosetta@home isn't working towards a GPU client? I know the recent promotional video emphasized a feature something to the effect of allowing people the option to optimize protein folding in a video game format, but wouldn't the benefit of GPU clients far exceed that of video games?

The advantage of a gaming console like the PS3 is that when you write for it, you know the hardware. They're all identical. Any optimizations for the hardware (ram, video, cpu) on the PS3 will be applicable to all PS3s.

For GPU clients, we have two big names.. ATI and nVidia - with ranges of cards with different GPUs with different abilities and different amounts of ram present on the video cards.

If it was easy to write GPU clients, then F@H's nVidia client would be available - instead of their giving up and developing an ATI client first that's still in Beta. (And a pain to setup.. now thinking I've got multiple video cards in a system I was Beta testing it on.)

We don't have optimized clients for the Intel cpus vs optimized clients for the AMD cpus here - and you'd need a variety of clients optimized for the different brands and classes of GPUs to take advantage of the modern GPUs - or a general client that only takes advantage of the abilities of the lowest common denominator.

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For GPU clients, we have two big names.. ATI and nVidia - with ranges of cards with different GPUs with different abilities and different amounts of ram present on the video cards.

If it was easy to write GPU clients, then F@H's nVidia client would be available - instead of their giving up and developing an ATI client first that's still in Beta. (And a pain to setup.. now thinking I've got multiple video cards in a system I was Beta testing it on.)

That's because NVidia doesn't have the FPP that ATI allows on their x1900 version and later cards. Nor does NVidia provide a Software Development Kit, and a Strategic Team you can contact to help develop, deploy and maintain your Distributed Computing Project. ATI does.

ATI has made it extremely easy for you to make your own GPU apps.

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I crunch for both R@H and F@H. I use CPU crunching for R@H and GPU crunching for F@H. The F@H GPU cruncher is still in beta and it is NOT currently user friendly if you want it to run at standard clock speeds, but it is still VERY scientifically worth it.

Additionally, GPU programming is difficult and if F@H were to reprogram their code in nVidia's CUDA language instead of running it on the drivers, it would take months with no guarantee of success. Currently, there is a driver issue with the nVidia G80 (8800gt) that prevents F@H code from running properly on the G80. F@H is waiting from nVidia for a fix. nVidia is aware and acknowledges the problem.


I GOTTA think that the BOINC folks are working with ATI & Sony & nVidia. I also gotta think that R@H is looking into such things and that charities like the Gates Foundation are ready to step in and that Microsoft will continue to donate resources. I figure that Intel and AMD may also be donating resources, we just don't hear about them?

Things are looking up!

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For GPU clients, we have two big names.. ATI and nVidia - with ranges of cards with different GPUs with different abilities and different amounts of ram present on the video cards.

If it was easy to write GPU clients, then F@H's nVidia client would be available - instead of their giving up and developing an ATI client first that's still in Beta. (And a pain to setup.. now thinking I've got multiple video cards in a system I was Beta testing it on.)

That's because NVidia doesn't have the FPP that ATI allows on their x1900 version and later cards. Nor does NVidia provide a Software Development Kit, and a Strategic Team you can contact to help develop, deploy and maintain your Distributed Computing Project. ATI does.

ATI has made it extremely easy for you to make your own GPU apps.

NVidia does have a software development kit, and it is released free to the public. There's someone in the SETI forums who has made significant progress in making a seti app for the 8800s.