The Folding@home initiative was spearheaded by Stanford Univeristy and added to the PS3, which supports the program through its Cell Broadband Engine and visualiser. According to the Good Design Award jury: “Analysis of proteins for the purpose of shedding light on diseases is just one example of solution design for social issues, a stance that indicates the direction that design should take in the future. Motivating the people who will be involved in these studies will be the key to success, but the program functions well as an idea for making participation in this project visible on a global scale.”

Congratulations Sony Computer Entertainment for the G-Mark seal of approval.

Folding@home [G-Mark]

Feel free to rattle off your own thoughts and impressions in the comments section.

Word is that Life becomes available after updating Folding@Home and that it supposedly becomes available then. As previously, mentioned, we were not successful and many others weren’t as well. But there are pics, and hi-res pics at that, of Life with PlayStation of people who claim to have been able to download it. Folks over in the Sony forums state that it appears this was only possible for a short window of time. At the very least, we do know that Life with PlayStation is around the corner.

Re: LIFE WITH PLAYSTATION OUT NOW!!! [PlayStation.com Forums Thanks, sirpilf!]

“Some people are just able to look at the game and in less than two minutes, get to the top score,” said (UW associate professor of computer science and engineering) Zoran Popovic. “They can’t even explain what they’re doing, but somehow they’re able to do it.”

Created by University of Washington doctoral student Seth Cooper and postdoctoral researcher Adrien Treuille, working with Zoran Popovic, professor of biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator David Baker, and David Salesin, a UW professor of computer science and engineering, the game could revolutionise the way medical research is done.

“We’re hopefully going to change the way science is done, and who it’s done by,” said Popovic, who presented the project today at the Games for Health meeting in Baltimore. “Our ultimate goal is to have ordinary people play the game and eventually be candidates for winning the Nobel Prize.”

The game itself is presented as a series of puzzles, slowly introducing you to the concepts of the game, offering point values for completing each level.

The team consulted with game developers in creation of Foldit, which along with human intuition introduces a competitive element to protein folding, allowing for players to create teams that will eventually compete against top researchers around the world. The game has been in testing with puzzles involving known proteins, and now they are beginning to move on to puzzles with unknown solutions. Later this year they intend to introduce proteins they wish existed, allowing players to possibly create all new biological creations within a game.

It remains to be seen how effective the Foldit is, but the concept itself is pure genius. If they could integrate this sort of thing into the Folding@Home project or just introduce it to consoles as a downloadable game via PSN or Xbox Live Arcade, they’ve immediately have some of the best minds in gaming at their disposal. Hell, with the push and pull mechanism of the puzzles I’ve played so far, even WiiWare wouldn’t be out of the question, though then the medical community would have to tackle an even bigger problem – friend codes.

Computer Game’s High Score Could Earn The Nobel Prize In Medicine [ScienceDaily]

SCEA’s Playstation 3 Folding@home project, which went live back on March 22, recently topped one million user, meaning that about 3,000 PS3 users have registered for Folding@home a day since they software went live on the console.

“Since partnering with SCEI, we have seen our research capabilities increase by leaps and bounds through the continued participation of Folding@home users,” said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead. “Now we have over one million PS3 users registered for Folding@home, allowing us to address questions previously considered impossible to tackle computationally, with the goal of finding cures to some of the world’s most life-threatening diseases. We are grateful for the extraordinary worldwide participation by PS3 and PC users around the globe.”

Thanks to all of those PS3 owners willing to tie their console to the network, and pay the resulting electric bill, PS3 users make up about 74 percent of the total teraflop computing power of the Folding@home project.

Well done Sony, well done. Oh, speaking of well done, Team Kotaku is currently ranked number 106 at folding@home. If you haven’t signed up (for Folding@home) and own a PS3, you really should.

One Million PLAYSTATION(R)3 Users Participate in Folding@home Research Project

PS3(R) Users Support Research Efforts of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Certain Forms of Cancer

FOSTER CITY, Calif., Feb. 4 /PRNewswire/ — Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) today announced that since PLAYSTATION(R)3 (PS3(R)) took part in Stanford University’s Folding@home(TM) project on March 22, 2007, the total number of registered users has reached over one million users. This equates to roughly 3,000 PS3 users registering for Folding@home per day or 2 new registered users every minute worldwide.
“Since partnering with SCEI, we have seen our research capabilities increase by leaps and bounds through the continued participation of Folding@home users,” said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead. “Now we have over one million PS3 users registered for Folding@home, allowing us to address questions previously considered impossible to tackle computationally, with the goal of finding cures to some of the world’s most life-threatening diseases.
We are grateful for the extraordinary worldwide participation by PS3 and PC users around the globe.”
Folding@home aims to understand protein folding and misfolding, and how these are related to diseases and many forms of cancer. When proteins do not fold correctly, there can be serious consequences, including many well-known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
Prior to the inclusion of PS3 in March 2007, the Folding@home project leveraged the distributed computing power of personal computers from around the world. Now a network of roughly 10,000 PS3s can accomplish the same
amount of work as a network of 100,000 PCs, and have the ability to perform research simulations in weeks rather than years. In fact, it took just six months after PS3 joining Folding@home for the project to surpass a petaflops (*1), a computing milestone that had never been reached before by a distributed computing network.
On September 16, 2007, Folding@home was recognized by Guinness World Records(TM) as the world’s most powerful distributed computing network.
Currently PS3 users make up approximately 74 percent of the total teraflop computing power of the Folding@home project. For more information, please see official website: http://www.scei.co.jp/folding/en/.

(*1) A petaflops is the ability of a computer to do one quadrillion floating point operations per second (FLOPS).

Stanford University’s Folding@home program is going to be recognised by the Guinness World Records folks as the most powerful distributed computer network in the world, thanks, in part, to the Playstation 3.

“To have Folding@home recognised by Guinness World Records as the most powerful distributed computing network ever is a reflection of the extraordinary worldwide participation by gamers and consumers around the world and for that we are very grateful,” said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead. “Without them we would not be able to make the advancements we have made in our studies of several different diseases. But it is clear that none of this would be even remotely possible without the power of PS3, it has increased our research capabilities by leaps and bounds.”

On September 23, the more than 670,000 PS3 users participating in Folding@home hit the petaflop mark. Grats, Stanford, Sony and gamers, hit the jump for the press release.

PLAYSTATION(R)3 Enables Folding@home(TM) to be Recognized by Guinness World Records(TM) as World’s Most Powerful Distributed Computing Network

TOKYO, Oct. 31 /PRNewswire/ — Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) today announced that PLAYSTATION(R)3 (PS3(R)) computer entertainment systems, part of Stanford University’s Folding@home(TM) program, have enabled the distributed computing project to be recognised by Guinness World Records(TM) as the most powerful distributed computing network in the world. The record was initially set on September 16, 2007 as Folding@home surpassed one petaflop(*1), a computing milestone that has never been reached before by a distributed computing network. In addition to this, the collective efforts of our users have enabled PS3 alone to reach the petaflop mark on September 23, 2007.

The record is a testament to the widespread participation of PS3 users from around the world-currently more than 670,000 unique PS3 users have registered to the Folding@home network, bringing the overall computing power of the program to more than a petaflop. Thanks to PS3’s powerful Cell Broadband Engine(TM) (Cell/B.E.), scientists will now be able to make greater progress in their studies of protein folding and its link to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and certain forms of cancer.

“To have Folding@home recognised by Guinness World Records as the most powerful distributed computing network ever is a reflection of the extraordinary worldwide participation by gamers and consumers around the world and for that we are very grateful,” said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead. “Without them we would not be able to make the advancements we have made in our studies of several different diseases. But it is clear that none of this would be even remotely possible without the power of PS3, it has increased our research capabilities by leaps and bounds.”

“To have PS3 play such a large role in allowing Folding@home to be honored by Guinness World Records is truly incredible,” said Masayuki Chatani, Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Technology Platform, Sony
Computer Entertainment Inc. “This record is clear evidence of the power of PS3 and the contributions that it is making to the Folding@home network, and more importantly, scientific research.”

The Folding@home program up until recently leveraged only the distributed computing power of personal computers (PC) from around the world. The PCs that made up the Folding@home network numbered roughly 200,000 giving the program the equivalent of about one-quarter of a petaflop. On March 15, 2007, PS3 joined the program and since then more than 670,000 unique PS3 users have registered to the Folding@home network, bringing the overall computing power of the program to more than a petaflop.

Starting with Folding@home, SCE will continue to support distributed computing projects in a wide variety of academic fields such as medical and social sciences and environmental studies through the use of PS3 and hopes to contribute to the advancement of science.

“The recent inclusion of PS3 as part of the Folding@home program has afforded our research group with computing power that goes far beyond what we initially hoped,” said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead. “Thanks to PS3, we are now essentially able to fast-forward several aspects of our research by a decade, which will greatly help us make more discoveries and advancements in our studies of several different diseases”.

The PlayStation 3. Blu-ray player. Video game console. Humanitarian.

PLAYSTATION®3 Helps Folding@home Become The First Distributed Computing Network To Reach The Petaflop Milestone Reached

Gamers Help Scientists Speed Up Their Research and Find Cures for Diseases Including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Cancer

TOKYO and FOSTER CITY, Calif., September 19, 2007 – Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) today announced that PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3â„¢) computer entertainment systems, part of Stanford University’s Folding@homeâ„¢ program, have enabled the distributed computing project to reach a petaflop, a milestone never before reached on a distributed computing network. Known amongst the scientific community, a petaflop is the ability of a computer to do one quadrillion floating point operations per second (FLOPS). In other words, if every person on the planet were to perform a simple mathematical calculation, such as calculating a percentage, each person would have to perform 75,000 calculations every second for the world’s population to achieve a petaflop.

By achieving a petaflop, scientists with the Folding@home program are now able to conduct research that typically would not be possible for 10 years down the line. Thanks to the PS3’s powerful Cell Broadband Engineâ„¢ (Cell/B.E.), scientists will now be able to make greater progress in their studies of protein folding and its link to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and certain forms of cancer.

“The recent inclusion of PS3 as part of the Folding@home program has afforded our research group with computing power that goes far beyond what we initially hoped,” said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead. “Thanks to PS3, we are now essentially able to fast-forward several aspects of our research by a decade, which will greatly help us make more discoveries and advancements in our studies of several different diseases.”

“When we introduced PS3, we knew its incredible processing power would allow for a great deal of innovation and creativity,” said Jack Tretton, president and CEO of SCEA. “It’s extremely rewarding to see that the scientific community has found a way to harness PS3 technology for humanitarian purposes and we continue to be amazed at what gamers and the Folding@home community have been able to accomplish in such a short amount of time.”

Because the process of folding proteins is so complex, computers are used to perform simulations to study the process. Since these simulations can take up to 30 years for a single computer to complete, Folding@home enables this task to be shared among thousands of computers connected via the network, utilizing distributed computing technology. The Folding@home program up until recently leveraged only the distributed computing power of personal computers (PC) from around the world. The PCs that made up the Folding@home network numbered roughly 200,000 giving the program the equivalent of about one-quarter of a petaflop. On March 15, 2007, PS3 joined the program and since then close to 600,000 unique PS3 users have registered to the Folding@home network, bringing the overall computing power of the program to more than a petaflop.

PS3 users can join the program by simply clicking on the Folding@home icon within the Network menu of the XMBâ„¢ (XrossMediaBar) or can optionally set the application to run automatically whenever the PS3 is idle (*1).