After five years, 15 million users and over 100 million computation hours having been crunched, Sony's partnership with Stanford University's Folding@home project will draw to a close at the end of the month.
The program, which has allowed PS3 owners to donate their console's processor towards crunching scientific data for the university's Alzheimer's research team, has also benefited the fight against cancer and Parkinson's disease.
"The PS3 system was a game changer for Folding@home, as it opened the door for new methods and new processors, eventually also leading to the use of GPUs", Folding@home's boss at Stanford, Vijay Pande, told Sony.
"We have had numerous successes in recent years. Specifically, in a paper just published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, we report on tests of predictions from earlier Folding@home simulations, and how these predictions have led to a new strategy to fight Alzheimer's disease."
"The next steps, now underway at Stanford, are to take this lead compound and help push it towards a viable drug. It's too early to report on our preliminary results there, but I'm very excited that the directions set out in this paper do appear to be bearing fruit in terms of a viable drug (not just a drug candidate)."
The removal comes as Sony takes the under-used Life With PlayStation section off the PS3's dashboard, as part of the console's 4.30 update, due on October 23.
PS3 System Software Update (v4.30): View PS Vita Trophies on your PS3 [PlayStation]