PS3s already pwning Folding@Home leaderboard; tonight's Foldathon to bring total dominance

Well we knew that the Cell processor -- which makes the PS3 a pretty cheap supercomputer, along with its myriad other roles -- was well suited to the task of crunching numbers for Stanford's Folding@Home project, but there's no way we could have expected the unbelievable impact made by 35,000 some gamers in only a few days. In what can only be described as a total hijacking of the leaderboard, PS3s are currently accounting for 734 of the 990 teraflops Folding processes at peak capacity; in other words, Cell processors have more than tripled the project's power even though they only account for around 13% of the total machines grinding away at any given time. Now keep in mind that Sony's boxes have only been pitching in since midweek, and with tonight's Sunday Night Foldathon -- an event which encourages PS3 owners to simultaneously run the app while they sleep -- we should see even more impressive performance as the slumbering masses donate record numbers of cycles. This would also probably be a good time to direct you towards instructions for joining Team Engadget, as well as to suggest that even though this is primarily PS3-centric, that shouldn't stop other PC-equipped team members and owners of even bigger supercomputers (we're looking at you, IBM) from participating.

Read - Folding leaderboard [via blog you like a hurricane]
Read - Foldathon thread [via PS3 Fanboy]

[McGinley @ Mar 25th 2007 4:55PM]

Im still not going to buy a ps3.

[TheGuy @ Mar 25th 2007 5:07PM]

@McGinley

We dont't care what fanboys think (PS3 fanboys included).

Anyway, it's nice to see the PS3 being used for the greater good. And to think, 35,000 isn't a large % of PS3 owners, so if this number even doubles it would have a large impact on the project. Netherless, I'm sill mad at the PS3's price in Canada going up, so I don't plan on buying one until there's a price-cut or in-game Killzone 2 graphics greatly impresses me.

[greg @ Mar 25th 2007 6:24PM]

thats great if your not going to buy a ps3, just dont wait the space and air to post it!!! because NONE OF US CARE. we care to post about the topic.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Mar 25th 2007 10:00PM]

I'm going to buy a PS3 just to run folding at home! It'll be Worth every cent to further the cause...

[Andy @ Mar 25th 2007 4:57PM]

Glad to see the PS3 is useful for something. I might go out and pick one up if I get the money to use as a dedicated F@H folding machine.

[shelterpaw @ Mar 26th 2007 11:17AM]

Well it has a few more uses. You can play games on it too. :P Plus I'm looking forward to seeing what linux hacks come out for it. I think it may become my central TV entertainment hub. However I'm waiting on LED rear-projection TV's to come down in price and then I'll buy the whole setup to go with my home theatre system.

On another note. How are they calculating the processor for the PS3? Right now they outnumber everything else, but theres only 35000 folding.

[John Doe @ Mar 25th 2007 5:03PM]

Even though I have a Wii, and really like it, and think the PS3 is not the best video game console, I think it's great that the PS3 is able to do this. Hopefully, someone will make a game engine that will allow the PS3 to take advantage of this.

[grable @ Mar 25th 2007 4:59PM]

This is what the CELL really excels at, number crunching.
Too bad games aren't that streamlined ;)

[Michael Brown @ Mar 25th 2007 8:21PM]

just another reason for me to pick up a PS3!

[myscrnnm @ Mar 25th 2007 4:59PM]

Excellent. I've already complete two work units and am starting a third one right now. Folding@home on the PlayStation 3 alone makes it worth buying.

We PlayStation 3 users are saving lives here. Deep down, we know Sony player-haters are just cold, heartless people.

[Sy @ Mar 25th 2007 5:06PM]

Some ad ideas for Sony:

Do you want to play silly video games for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?

Be the change you wish to see in the world ...buy a PS3.

[saboola @ Mar 25th 2007 5:24PM]

Sy: Change it so that its a woman sitting on a toilet yelling that at a mirror, while someone is in the background launching kittens into the air using bottle rockets, and you will have a Sony commercial.

[McGinley @ Mar 25th 2007 5:16PM]

@TheGuy

Im not a fanboy.I'd love a PS3 but i live in Ireland and its far too expensive.

Just thought i would clear that up.

[MR @ Mar 25th 2007 5:10PM]

This is more like a sad story for Sony. You buy a PS3 to play games on, yet it's being use for something else.

And while I appreciate the research, I don't like them treating our machines as free CPU power. No, they're not free. Every single one of us needs to pay the electricity bill for them too. Machines like PS3s shouldn't be turned on all the time, either. Instead, they should target the machines that stays ON AND IDLE during the night, like a lot of our office computers.

As a matter of fact, I've donated 1+ year of my CPU power to another cancer research project at grid.org some time ago. Sometimes I just wonder why they can't consolidate the systems.

[myscrnnm @ Mar 25th 2007 5:21PM]

"I don't like them treating our machines as free CPU power."

How can you say that? Even if saving a life cost, a million dollars, wouldn't that be worth it? The cost of electricity to run the PlayStation 3 is negligible.

[greg @ Mar 25th 2007 6:24PM]

that great if YOU buy a ps3 to play games because consoles aren't just for playing games any more, people buy them for other reasons.

i do agree with your and think hey should target the machines that stays on and idle during the night, like a lot of our office computers.

[BlackHole @ Mar 25th 2007 11:23PM]

I've donated 5-6 years on the Grid.org project too. I switched to Folding@Home last month since I haven't heard any results from grid.org.

[kingofwale @ Mar 25th 2007 5:13PM]

>Netherless, I'm sill mad at the PS3's price in Canada going up,

Walmart is still selling them at the old price. that's where I got mine.

Still, please, save the bashing to another post. this post is to celebrate Fold@Home.

I think it's smart of Sony to join up. It's almost like free-goodwell publicity.

[Nick @ Mar 25th 2007 5:23PM]

No need to clear things up, 'TheGuy' was being being an arrogant fool.

[Salih @ Mar 25th 2007 5:18PM]

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats

come on engadget its not 734 tflops for ps3, its 515 tflops with 771 tflops in total
where u got ur stats anyway ?

[Ryan D. @ Mar 25th 2007 7:02PM]

@saboola
i fell out of my chair laughing at your comment. thank you.

if the PS3 ends up curing cancer i'll just laugh. especially at all the people saying that video games are destroying the minds of children. the PS3 may (but doesn't) destroy their minds, but it sure as hell is doing a good job trying to save the rest of them.

[SOCOMRAIDER @ Mar 26th 2007 8:04PM]

LIfe is a precious thing. But it is the way of life that people die. Whether it is from Cancer or some other disease, it must happen. There is a reason why these things happen, population control. We are already starting to spin out of control with the population. Sure it is great to save a life. But if there are too many people populating the Earth, then we will all suffer from food shortages and other problems.

[Sy @ Mar 25th 2007 5:27PM]

If all of the PS3s join in, it would contribute 5646 teraflops.

[ablah @ Mar 26th 2007 12:17AM]

Which is a roughish 5.5 petaflops. Fucking awesome.

[matt @ Mar 25th 2007 5:29PM]

Yea, its pretty easy, i just leave mine on over night, and when i want to reserve my ps3 exclusively for me i turn it on tell my siblings its "doing something important" and "if they mess with it the playstation will break"

[MR @ Mar 25th 2007 5:30PM]

@myscrnnm

I didn't say it's not for good cause. As negligible as it is, it still adds up. Besides, having an idle machine running this adds maybe 20-30watts. But asking people to turn on a machine just to do this when it should be off or on standby adds 200+ watts. I just think that they should make it clear to other people.

[badtaste @ Mar 25th 2007 5:35PM]

@Salih
The picture was probably taken at some other time. Therefore the numbers you found at the folding@home website were different

[Philip S @ Mar 25th 2007 6:17PM]

I would join team Engadget but I haven't been able to get Folding@Home to run under Vista. I run the grid.org project instead.

[tazcell @ Mar 25th 2007 6:02PM]

If you scale up the numbers on the GPU's 29977 of whatever GPU's they are using would pump out 1700+ TFLOPS.

If you scale it up.

[syadasti @ Mar 25th 2007 6:58PM]

ATI GPU 44/749 = .0587 TFLOP/CPU
PS3 734/29977 = .0245 TFLOP/CPU

PS3 = less than half as fast as the best folder

[Alex Carver @ Mar 26th 2007 7:22AM]

GPUs can only perform very specific calculations, which makes them very fast, but not very versatile. They could never run the variety of calculations they need to perform on GPUs alone. As speed increases, flexibility decreases. The PS3 is the perfect middle ground between the general purpose CPU and the GPU.

[Rich @ Mar 25th 2007 6:02PM]

It's all too difficult... Do I obey International Turn-off Day (or whatever it is), and save the world from too many CO2s; or do I leave my PC/PS3 on and find the cure for cancer?

[Daryl Herbert @ Mar 25th 2007 6:09PM]

"Cell processors have more than tripled the project's power"

That's not correct, for two reasons.

First, 734/990 < .75

Second, Sony's numbers are going to drop during the daytime (when people play their PS3s). Measuring the current tflops at noon will make it look like PS3s aren't contributing as much as they really are, and measuring the current tflops at night will overcount Sony's addition to the project.

[Rich @ Mar 25th 2007 6:14PM]

Noon where? The rest of the world (finally) has PS3s as well, you know...

[gmr @ Mar 25th 2007 6:24PM]

Your math is wrong, it would be 990(total)-734(PS3 contributions) = 256 TFlops (Without the PS3). So, 734/256 = 2.86. It's still not tripled, but it's way more than .75.

[craig @ Mar 25th 2007 6:57PM]

Both of you are wrong.

The project without the PS3: 990-734 = 256

(with PS3) / (without): 990 / 256 = 3.867

More than tripled. .75 would be the threshold for a 4x improvement in that back-assward way of computing it.

[gmr @ Mar 25th 2007 7:20PM]

@Craig
Thanks for the correction, I tried to fix it, but my comment would not show up for some reason x_x.

[Deezee @ Mar 25th 2007 6:08PM]

This is awsome. I'm still getting an XBOX but this is really cool.

[oGMo @ Mar 25th 2007 6:09PM]

Back in June 2006 there was a great comment on Digg (no attribution or link, sorry):

>> if [Sony] announced that the PS3 was $99, came with 8 wireless rumble controllers, was 100% backward compatible with the PS2 and PS1 AND cured cancer, you'd still have 100 posts on Digg complaining about "The only reason the PS3 cures cancer is because the wireless controllers they use probably cause cancer."

[oGMo @ Mar 25th 2007 6:10PM]

[Whoops, looks like the rest of my comment got cut off due to using two less-than signs?]

...Back then it was funny because it was extreme. Now it's more sad because it's close to the truth. Get some perspective, people.

As for how this has anything to do with gaming performance: this is very similar to what you would do if you had thousands of objects you're calculating individual physics for all in realtime...

[Kyle @ Mar 25th 2007 6:14PM]

This is great, I ran my ps3 with this for just an hour, and than I started gaming and turned it off. After reading this article, im going to leave my ps3 on nearly all the time, this is really great stuff Sony, :).

I joined team engadget, and I bet if all of the ps3 users that read engadget did this all night we could jump engdaget a place or two.... or three...

[myscrnnm @ Mar 25th 2007 6:44PM]

"Sony's numbers are going to drop during the daytime (when people play their PS3s). Measuring the current tflops at noon will make it look like PS3s aren't contributing as much as they really are, and measuring the current tflops at night will overcount Sony's addition to the project."

Wrong. That's bad logic. It would actually make more sense for people to be running Folding@home during the daytime, since they'll be at work, and they'll actually be playing games at night when they have free time. Cuz last time I checked, nobody's bringing their PlayStation 3 to the office. Second of all, we are not merely in one timezone. The United States alone has several different time zones. When this stuff is measured, it's daytime in one area and nighttime in another. This number will only rise as more people learn of Folding@home for the PlayStation 3 and as people purchase more PlayStation 3s.

[oncology researcher @ Mar 25th 2007 6:54PM]

It's great that everyone is participating in Folding@home, but... at best, it will allow for a better computational model of a protein, which historically has added little overall value to drug discovery. Unfortunately computational methods such as this can't model such very important parameters such as cell permeability, oral bioavailability, efficacy, toxicity, resistance, etc.

[Kev50027 @ Mar 25th 2007 9:33PM]

Counting watts used vs. results, the PS3 is far more efficient, alleviating any advantage GPUs have over them.

[oGMo @ Mar 25th 2007 6:59PM]

@oncology researcher: Wrong. Good slashdot comment with *actual* references:

http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=227923&cid=18463921

[oncology researcher @ Mar 25th 2007 7:06PM]

oGMo-

I didn't say that Folding@home hasn't "actually provided useful information to the scientific community." Very useful discoveries can be made in basic science which never translate into applications such as marketed drugs. Since you're enamored with *actual* references, please provide one where computational methods have led to a drug. I'm not saying they're useless, but the utility of enzyme modeling is marginal and hasn't led to the payoff that was envisioned (look at Vertex, for example).

[DerekPowell @ Mar 26th 2007 4:24PM]

I imagine those impressive GPU numbers come from GPU's similar to the one in the Xbox 360, not to be a fanboy, but I'd really like to see folding hit the 360 aswell. I'd be happy to leave mine on all the time, suckin up University power, savin' lives.

[Landlocked @ Mar 25th 2007 7:14PM]

Kudos for Sony on this one. Maybe they'll end up earning some good Karma for a change. I'm off to a funeral tomorrow for a 30-year-old friend who just lost her 30-year cancer battle. It's be nice to one use gene therapy or something to treat and cure cancer.

[Owen V @ Mar 25th 2007 7:24PM]

F@H is nearing a petaflops :)

[peshue @ Mar 25th 2007 7:40PM]

I know F@H is a good cause and everything. But thus far have they actually accomplished anything with it other than saving Stanford huge amounts of money?