March 18th, 2007

PlayStation 3 helps medical research

Sony Computer Entertainment announced that it has joined Stanford University in itâ€™s quest to find the cure of diseases like Parkinsonâ€™s, Alhzimerâ€™s, cystic fibrosis and many cancers.

The PlayStation 3 will be able to connect to Stanfordâ€™s Folding@Home program, a computer project aimed at understanding protein folding, misfolding and related diseases. The pocess of protein folding is very complex and computer simulations are needed to study the process, but to simulate this process on a single computer could take up to 30 years, so a computer network is needed to shorten this activity . And since the PlayStation 3 Cell processor is about 10 times faster than a standard PC processor, the researchers could speed things up even more.

With the latest software updates PlayStation 3 users will be able to join the program by clicking the Folding@Home icon or set the application to run automatically while the machine is idle

Sony Computer Entertainment also declared that this is only the beginning as they intend to support other academic fields such as social sciences and environmental studies.