Sony’s PS3 lets you fight cancer@home

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Saturday, 17 March 2007

The awesome power of Sony’s ‘Cell Broadband Engine’ is being put to use to save the world – or at least save humans affected by cancers, cystic fibrosis, Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease – could it be the first time a console has been used to do genuine good?

The PS3’s Cell chip, officially entitled the ‘Cell Broadband Engine’, has an awesome amount of power, and when connected to the Internet, can have some of that power used to solve some of our most compelling and pressing medical problems.

Already in operation for years on desktop PCs, Stanford University’s ‘Folding@home’ program is a “distributed computing project aimed at understanding protein folding, misfolding and related diseases”, with all the information collected sent back to a central computer for tabulating and recording into the final results.

In the same way that the Seti@home program uses the distributed power and nature of today’s connected computers in the search for extra terrestrial intelligence, so does Folding@home work to “help study the causes of diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis and many cancers”, according to Sony’s press release.

Distributed computing, which shares the load across millions of computers worldwide, allows the task of analyzing simulations to happen much, much faster than if the simulations were run on a single computer. Sony says that were the simulations to run on a single machine, it would take 30 years before you’d have a result.

But as the Cell chip is, according to Sony, around 10 to 30 times faster than the chip in a regular PC (depending on the chip, of course, with newer PC chips much faster and more capable than older ones), the process is not only much faster, but multiplied even more when run on millions of PS3s, which it could well be should users decide to download the Folding@home application to run on their PS3s and to contribute valuable computing time to the project.

According to Sony’s FAQ on the topic, simulations done with regular distributed PCs can still take 5 to 10 years to complete, which is much faster than the 30 year timeframe for a single computer. But Sony says that with the PS3, the simulations can be complete in only ‘a few months’, as a network of roughly 10,000 PS3s can accomplish the same amount of work as the current network or 200,000 PCs in the Folding@home program.

Other interesting facts from the Sony FAQ include the PS3’s graphic chip letting users see the protein folding that their particular PS3 is simulating on screen with vivid imagery and color, with the SIXAXIS controller letting users rotate protein strands and zoom in and out. There will also be a ‘live map’ of the Earth that shows fellow PS3 users on the network, contributing computing cycles at the same time that you are.

According to Masayuki Chatani, Corporate Executive and CTO Computer, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc, “Millions of users have experienced the power of PS3 entertainment. Now they can utilize that exceptional computing power to help fight diseases. In order to study protein folding, researchers need more than just one super computer, but the massive processing power of thousands of networked computers. Previously, PCs have been the only option for scientists, but now, they have a new, more powerful tool—PS3."

As you’d expect, the people behind the Folding@home project are equally excited to have Sony, the PS3 and PS3 owners on board. Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead said that: “We're thrilled to have SCE be part of the Folding@home project. With PS3 now part of our network, we will be able 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.”

PS3 or soon-to-be PS3 owners wanting to take part in the project won’t have long to wait, with the software available for download a the end of March. To make things easy for PS3 owners, the Folding@home icon will be added to the Network menu of the XMB (XrossMediaBar), with users able to start donating PS3 computing cycles by clicking on the Folding@home icon, or if users prefer, can set the software to work whenever the PS3 is not being used, and is still on and connected to the Internet, with this feature not set to default thereby giving users the true choice of whether they want to contribute and how they wish to do so.

Sony says that this is but the start, with other distributing computing projects to also receive Sony and PS3 support, and hopefully the support of PS3 owners. Sony says that they will “continue to support distributed computing projects in a wide variety of academic fields such as medical and social sciences and environmental studies throughout the use of PS3 and hopes to contribute to the advancement of science”.

It's also a challenge to other console makers, namely Microsoft and Nintendo, to do something similar, meaning we might see an Xbox 360 version of the same software sooner rather than later, as I can't imagine Microsoft wanting to have all the glory on this one!

For more info on Folding@home and Sony’s involvement, you can visit the Sony website to learn more!
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