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.
About Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.
Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. continues to redefine the
entertainment lifestyle with its PlayStation® and PS one® game console, the
PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system, the PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) system,
and the ground-breaking PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) computer entertainment system.
Recognized as the undisputed industry leader, Sony Computer Entertainment
America Inc. markets the PlayStation family of products and develops, publishes,
markets, and distributes software for the PS one game console, the PlayStation 2
computer entertainment system, the PSP system and the PS3 system for the North
American market. Based in Foster City, Calif. Sony Computer Entertainment America,
Inc. serves as headquarters for all North American operations and is a wholly owned
subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
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