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Playstation 3 Supercomputer And Joining Folding@Home

March 14th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

Kotaku had an interesting story yesterday about an academic who created a supercomputer cluster costing a measly $5,000, using eight PS3s. Apparently the PS3 is very good at clustering because of the very powerful Cell processor.

Although my PC definitely doesn’t have as much power as a supercomputer I really feel that I should use my idle cycles to do some folding, so if you are part of a team let me know and I’ll add my PC to your cluster.

If you haven’t come across Folding@Home yet, it is a distributed computing project where people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world.

All of this processing power is used to investigate and study protein folding, which help to find treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

Definitely a worthy use of your PC and much better than just running a screen-saver!

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About the Author

Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University, and currently runs the Portal and online operations for one of the largest ISPs in the UK. He also writes for Windows 7 News.

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There Are 5 Responses So Far. »

#1

Comment by Zath on 14 March 2007:

At one point I had about 3 computers folding all the time, but got then got out of the habit of setting it up again af re-formats. I should really get back into it given I often have at least a couple of machines going at once.

Seem to remember I used to be part of the Custom PC (magazine) team, presumably I’d still be with them.

Have you thought of starting you own Connected Internet team? I suppose it would depend on the level of interest as to whether it’s worth creating.
#2

Comment by Everton on 14 March 2007:

I’m all up for starting a team if we can get a few more people interested, but at least we can count on your 3 PCs

I used to subscribe to CustomPC as well in the year before I built my PC - I think from issue 1. I ended it though once I actually built my PC and also once I realised all the content was available for free on the net.

I’d hate to be in magazine publishing as it was a hard enough industry before, but the net must be killing it now.
#3

Comment by Zath on 14 March 2007:

I was in a similar position, subscribed to Custom PC for a year, then cancelled once i was happy with upgrades. They must have a real small dedicated bunch of modders buying the magazine on a continual basis i think.

It takes a month or two for the articles and reviews to appear on the website, but that’s not a problem unless you’re in the market for something - in which case you could just walk into WHSmith and check out the latest A-List products - not that I’d such a thing of course!
#4

Comment by Mark from Bloglyne.com on 14 March 2007:

This is really interesting - I have always been fascinated by linking massive networks together… cool reference article Everton.
#5

Pingback by Join The Bloggers United Folding@Home Team | Connected Internet on 16 March 2007:

[...] posting earlier this week about an academic who had created his own supercomputer out of eight PS3s, I’ve just learnt that Sony from March 23rd all PS3s will be able to help the Folding@home [...]