p2pnet.net News:- At last, a truly worthwhile use for a Sony product: the company’s Play Station 3 might help researchers track down cures for diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Its spare processing power will be harnessed by US biologists who already run the distributed computing project, folding@home (FAH), says the BBC, going on:

“The project harnesses the capacity of thousands of PCs to examine how the shape of proteins, critical to most biological functions, affect disease. FAH say a network of PS3’s will allow performance similar to supercomputers.

“With 10,000 machines joined together the researchers calculate they should be able to do a thousand trillion calculations per second.”

Volunteers will download software for the new PS3 to donate their spare processing power to FAH, says inthenews.co.uk., adding:

“The organisation will be using the computing power to simulate the folding of proteins, a complex process that would take a standard PC about 10,000 days to complete.”

Also See:
BBC – PlayStation 3 tackles world ills, August 26, 2006
inthenews.co.uk – Game over for Alzheimer’s, August 26, 2006