"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 revolutionize 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 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 the 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 recognized 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 recognized 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 recognized 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 recognized 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."

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 (PS3™) computer entertainment systems, part of Stanford University's Folding@home™ 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 Engine™ (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 XMB™ (XrossMediaBar) or can optionally set the application to run automatically whenever the PS3 is idle (*1).

To date our team has 952 members and a grand score of 7.1 million. And here's a list of our top five members:

1 bigredbutton 409559
2 Nonog 329152
3 PS3 314064
4 SCTrojans83 127768
5 mrWalrus 111669

Hey, lets have a Fourth of July folding party! Join now, do you part to fold shit. Our team ID is 57858.

I think it would be great if Sony followed some of their forum posters suggestions and implemented an official leaderboard and maybe even some HOME trophies.
Folding@home Update [Playstation.Blog]

Would they be even having this conversation if we weren't doing it? I don't know. I would guess that the medical community would take help from anywhere they could get it, but the commentary that I heard is that Stanford isn't sure that [the Xbox 360's processing abilities] would help them very much, which is odd to me because if it helped at all, it seems like they would welcome it with open arms.

It's really ugly territory to get into, but let's take fighting a disease and see if we can get some credit for that. It's not a cool game to play one way or the other, so I don't want to even give the impression that that's our motivation, and I'd be very disappointed if they're looking for PR value or to try to suck off some of the goodwill that we're doing.

I'm not really allowed to swear here a lot, but this is the closest the definition of the word "bitching" I've ever heard. It's a charity! The more people get involved, the better, right?! It's not like Greenpeace goes around arguing with the Sierra Club about who should be saving the environment or how. They just do it because it's the right thing to do. Kim Phu

Sony Doesn't like Microsoft Joining Folding@Home for "PR" [Arts Technica]

Now that last one would be an interesting forum argument to see, and it could very well become a reality as Peter "Tattooed Love Boy" Moore suggest that Microsoft would strongly consider adding a research application similar to Folding@home to the Xbox 360. In a Q&A session with Mike Antonucci of The Mercury News, Moore tackled the subject.

Then if we truly believe that we can in some way marshall the resources of a much larger installed base of Xbox 360 owners, with a processor that's of equal power to the PS3, then you have my commitment that we'll look at that. And if we believe we can add value to solving a gnarly problem such as the medical problems and the health problems that Folding@home seems to be doing, then we'll certainly look at that very strongly.

This is exactly what I was talking about last November. If we could harness the power and ambition of gamers to achieve high scores and bragging rights and apply it to real world problems, we would be a truly awesome force. Now we're taking real steps. Go us! Michael Fahey

Peter Moore interview, part three [The Mercury News via GamesIndustry.biz]

Today Sony has announced their continuing support with an update set to go live tomorrow that will increase folding speeds, improve the user location display on the map, and allow for longer names for teams and individual donors.

The folks at Stanford are ecstatic:

"The PS3 turnout has been amazing, greatly exceeding our expectations and allowing us to push our work dramatically forward," said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home program lead. "Thanks to PS3, we have performed simulations in the first few weeks that would normally take us more than a year to calculate. We are now gearing up for new simulations that will continue our current studies of Alzheimer's and other diseases."

PlayStation 3 Users Significantly Contribute To The Folding@homeTM Program

Tokyo, April 25, 2007 - Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCE) today announced that great progress has been made in the one month since PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3 ) computer entertainment systems became part of Stanford University's Folding@home program, a distributed computing project aimed at understanding protein folding, misfolding and related diseases. Since the program launched in March, participation by the PS3 user community has been phenomenal, providing Folding@home with immense computing power that is helping to fast forward its research. Furthermore, thanks to PS3's powerful Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.), the Folding@home program has become one of the most powerful distributed computing networks in the world and is quickly approaching a level of computing power that is of historical proportions.

Exhibiting its continued commitment to the program, SCE also announced that starting tomorrow, it is providing a Folding@home application update that will further enhance the user experience. The updated software features an improvement in folding calculation speeds, increased visibility of user location (*1) on the globe and the ability for users to create longer donor or team names.

"The PS3 turnout has been amazing, greatly exceeding our expectations and allowing us to push our work dramatically forward," said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home program lead. "Thanks to PS3, we have performed simulations in the first few weeks that would normally take us more than a year to calculate. We are now gearing up for new simulations that will continue our current studies of Alzheimer's and other diseases."

Some of the key accomplishments made since the Folding@home program launched on PS3 include:

More than 250,000 unique PS3 users have registered to the program in just one month.

PS3 users are delivering nearly 400 teraflops, achieving a total computing power of over 700 teraflops at a single moment. This is more than double the computing capacity of the network before PS3 joined the program (*2)

The "halo-effect" of PS3 has been evident as the number of active PCs has increased by 20 percent in the last month.

"We continue to be thrilled with the ongoing contributions of the PS3 user community in helping the Folding@home program study the causes of many different diseases that afflict our society," said Masayuki Chatani, Corporate Executive and CTO Computer, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "As we move forward, we are issuing a call to action for all PS3 owners around the world to download the Folding@home application and help this cause. These PS3 fans can also be part of history as the Folding@home distributed computing program inches closer to achieving a petaflop - a measure of computing power that has never before been reached."

PS3 users can download the new update version 1.1 by restarting the Folding@home application. New Folding@home users can join the program by simply clicking on the Folding@home icon within the Network menu of the XMB (XrossMediaBar) or can optionally set the application to run automatically whenever the PS3 is idle (*3).

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.

My Playstation 3 has been running, without stop, since the new PS3 firmware update hit. That's more than an entire week of no overheating, I'm pretty damn impressed.

In that time I've played exactly zero PS3 games, instead I'm letting my console chew up Folding@Home data and bump me up the Team Kotaku ladder. Currently, I'm stuck at 11th place out of more than 540 people.

More importantly, though, Team Kotaku is no ranked 821 out of 56,420 teams in the world. If you own a PS3 or a computer and haven't joined yet, hop to it. There's no time like the present.

Here's our team stats for your perusal. Oh, and Whitesanjuro, turn off your damn PS3 already, I'm never going to catch up with you. Brian Crecente

Idaho residents have it the best at only $6.88 per month and Hawaii folders get hit the hardest to the tune of $27.76. Me? I'm looking at $17.52 going by California's higher than national average.

I'm going to ask Crecente if I should expense this. You, you should scrounge for loose change and start up your Folding program. Oh, and join Team Kotaku while you're at it. Michael McWhertor

The Cost of Folding [IGN]

Stanford University's Folding@Home program has gotten a lot of play this week, and so it should. The program harnesses the power of idling PC's and PS3's to calculate data that will eventually help find cures for Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's, various types of Cancer and other diseases.

This is all well and good and I'm sure we all want to do something to help the cause, but how does this program really work? What exactly is protein folding and what will be the eventual outcome? GameVideos producer Kathleen Sanders finds out in this sit down interview with Sony's r&d manager, Dr. Richard Marks.

This is a program all owners of the PS3 should try and opt into if they can. I know I would if I actually had a PS3, but I will be downloading the PC version to use on my computer here at home. If you are interested in joining a team for the experiment, why not join our own newly formed Team Kotaku. And as Kathleen so eloquently puts it at the end of the interview, "If you don't download it, then you're kind of automatically an asshole."

I will warn you: this is a very scientifical and techie interview with lots of big words, so if it's early where you are, you might want to down a couple cups of coffee before taking this one on.

Sony has teamed up with Stanford Unversity for Folding@home. The project is a distributed computing network of PS3s to help study the causes of a number of diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis and many cancers.

So! Kotaku has set up its own Folding@home page. You can view it here. This idea comes via Kotakuite Chris. Many thanks for that, Chris! Our team name is Team Kotaku (clever, eh?) and our Folding team number is 57858. We encourage as many Kotakuites to join as possible. This is a very cool program and admirable on Stanford/Sony's part.

To join the program you just click on the icon in the Cross Media bar and open up Folding@home. Then hit triangle and go to "Identity." Punch in the team number there. You can also set up your PS3 to work on the application whenever the console is idle. This second option will require leaving the console powered on and connected to the Internet.

Brian Lam at Gizmodo tells us that the PS3 has nearly sixty percent of the entire power now. Pretty amazing. Brian Ashcraft

Folding@home Client Statistics by OS - Thanks Matt!

Japan-based reader Chris downloaded the 1.6 PS3 update and took some footage of Folding@home in action. Looks pretty neat — Really neat, actually. Anyone else download this? What do you think? Brian Ashcraft

Gizmodo editor surpemeo was on hand to check out the new Playstation 3 Folding@home at Stanford University today and sent us a barrel-full of pictures to peruse. Sexy! Brian Crecente

This is super cool. Sony Computer Entertainment is teaming up with Stanford University to create a distributed computing network of PS3s to help study the causes of a number of diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis and many cancers.

The next software update for the PS3, expected to hit at the end of the month, will include a new Folding@home icon for the cross media bar. To join the program you just click on the icon. You can also set up your PS3 to work on the application whenever the console is idle. This second option will require leaving the console powered on and connected to the Internet. Not sure if that could create a heat issue.

The Cell-powered PS3s will tap into Stanford's Folding@home program which has been in use on home computers since 2000 to work on studying disease by simulating the process of folding proteins. When performed on a single computer this simulation can tak up to 30 years, but Folding@home allows thousands of computers, and now thousands of PS3s, to work on the same simulation through distributed computing.

Sony says the Cell process inside the PS is about 10 times faster than a standard chip in a computer, so this will be quite a boon to researchers.

"Millions of users have experienced the power of PS3 entertainment. Now they can utilize that exceptional computing power to help fight diseases," said Masayuki Chatani, Corporate Executive and CTO Computer, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "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." "We're thrilled to have SCE be part of the Folding@home project," said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead. "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."

This is just the first use of the PS3 for distributive computing, according to Sony. The company said they will continue to support " a wide variety of academic fields such as medical and social sciences and environmental studies."

This is a very admirable thing that Sony is doing. Good for them. Brian Crecente