Folding@Home on the PS3
A few folks wrote me to point out the distributed client announcement from Stanford and Sony that will allow PS3 users to donate unused CPU cycles to a good cause. To quote the FAQ:
Our goal is to apply this new technology to push Folding@Home into a new level of capabilities, applying our simulations to further study of protein folding and related diseases, including Alzheimer’s Disease, Huntington's Disease, and certain forms of cancer. With these computational advances, coupled with new simulation methodologies to harness the new techniques, we will be able to address questions previously considered impossible to tackle computationally, and make even greater impacts on our knowledge of folding and folding related diseases.
A couple of people were interested in what I thought, and really, what can I say? It rocks - there's no reason not to use spare CPU cycles for a good cause, and I think Sony really hit a homerun here. To be fair, it's not a new idea. Seti@home has been doing this sort of thing for years, but this is the first time a console has been leveraged for this purpose. Have to give props to Sony for some original thinking there.
What'll be really interesting to see is whether this is something you can run at all times (ie, as a background process), or whether there will be some sort of low-power state you can leave your PS3 in such that you can continually donate CPU cycles without burning up the house. These new boxes (PS3 and Xbox 360) do draw more power that previous generations, and I'm hoping there's some thinking around the power consumption aspect.