With the one month anniversary of the PS3"s contribution to Folding@Home it has now been announced that any one moment Folding@Home is producing 700 Teraflops of processing power, 400 of which is currently contributed by PS3 consoles. Over 250,000 PS3 consoles have signed up to the service since March. "The PS3 turnout has been amazing, greatly exceeding our expectations and allowing us to push our work dramatically forward," said Vijay Pande, associate professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home program lead.
It"s not just the PS3 that has contributed to a jump in power, PC usage has grown 20% this month as awareness of the scheme is bolstered by the PS3"s success. "Thanks to PS3, we have performed simulations in the first few weeks that would normally take us more than a year to calculate. We are now gearing up for new simulations that will continue our current studies of Alzheimer"s and other diseases," Vijay Pande added.
The project is also making a new software update available for PS3 owners. The 1.1 version improves visibility of donor locations on the globe, folding calculation speed and protein viewing. There"s also additional language support, help screen hints, and improved donor-name length and character handling.