PS3 Downtime To Fight Disease

Aerenel writes, "CNN reports that Sony has teamed up with Folding@home to use the PS3 to study how proteins are formed in the human body and how they sometimes form incorrectly. From the article: 'Donating [a gamer's] PS3's down time to researchers could help cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or mad cow disease.' PS3 users will be able to download a software package that tracks when the PS3 is not being used. While gamers are in school, at work, or asleep, their system's Cell processor can be used to perform simulations for research organizations. The PS3, due in November, has gotten serious negative press in the past few months, and this refreshing good news may win back the hearts of gamers still undecided about purchasing the system."

Well...

[urbanradar (1001140)]

This definitely seems like a good thing. But I wonder, will gamers really let that influence their purchasing decisions? Honestly, I have my doubts.

Re:Well...

[adam31 (817930)]

Well, it all depends on how it's marketed, it could have a huge snowball effect.

If you award people 'hero points' and display a leaderboard showing how many lives each gamer has saved... or break it down by institution-- like college or business. Especially if the interface is really cool. Maybe have a hall of fame of cool-looking protein folds you could download.

It could become quite a competition to not play your PS3, particularly if launch titles turn out to be as good as launch titles typically are.

Re:

[honkycat (249849)]

Probably not much, but that's not really the point. It's good publicity that can't hurt. People won't go out and think "wow i can help fold proteins," they'll just give a little thought to Sony and the PS3 when they read the articles about it. It's all about marketing, and subliminal marketing is the best kind.

In other words...

[bombshelter13 (786671)]

In other words, your PS3 uses network bandwidth and electricity you paid for with your money to calculate who knows what and send it God knows where when you're not using it and anyone who tries to stop their PS3 from doing this is a horrible person who supports cancer.

Re:

[yincrash (854885)]

Don't forget shortening the useful life of the PS3 itself!

Re:In other words...

[grommit (97148)]

Riiiight.. because the heating/cooling cycles of electronic equipment being turned on and off repeatedly is *much* better for it.

At least try to come up with a valid reason to not use it.

Re:In other words...

[urbanradar (1001140)]

RTFA. It's on a voluntary basis. If you don't like it, don't do it. But it certainly is nice to have the possibility, and, as it seems, officially approved by Sony.

Re:In other words...

[timster (32400)]

Well, to be fair, the bandwidth is probably minimal and, in cold seasons, the power consumption will just turn into heat and make itself slightly useful.

From the summary, it sounds like this will be something you can download if you want to, just like it is on the PC. I don't think people who don't run Folding@Home are often attacked for being horrible people who support cancer.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. But it's a good way for kids to convince their parents to shell out all that cash for a shiney new PS3.

Pity

[UbuntuDupe (970646)]

Well, I guess when all else fails, they can always go for the pity angle. "Oh!! Please help us ingrain Blu-Ray! We're fighting DISEASE!"

Sign me up

[sexyrexy (793497)]

That definitely changes my mind about paying $600 for a gaming console! Why didn't they do this from the start? The option to run F@H on my PS3 DEFINITELY makes up the 200+ difference between it and my other next-gen options.

Fight my disease

[OSS_ilation (922367)]

Do I have Alzheimer's, or did I read about this last month?

Re:

[OSS_ilation (922367)]

Even better, how about a link? PS3 to cure Alzheimer's? [kotaku.com]

Huh?

[Phanatic1a (413374)]

The PS3, due in November, has gotten serious negative press in the past few months, and this refreshing good news may win back the hearts of gamers still undecided about purchasing the system."

If I'm already ambivalent about spending that much money on a game system, the question "What will the game system, which I bought to play games, do when I'm not playing games on it?" is not likely to be a significant influence on my decision.

Double dipping?

[by Anonymous Coward]

So if we BUY a PS3, and we allow Sony to use the free cylces of my processor, does that mean that if there is a cure found for Alzheimers, other genetic diseases or stupidity, that we as a public will be able to access this new found cure for free? OR do we get our cut? For some reason I think not.

Please, be a Philanthropist. Let a large megacorporation or partnering pharmacuetical company benifit from this.

Or save the energy that would have been used for a much more worthwile cause. Powering a megahuge C

Re:

[boingyzain (739759)]

Uh, you aren't allowing Sony to use your spare cycles, you're allowing Folding@Home (or more broadly, Stanford University's Pande Group) to use your spare cycles. And they are a non-profit organization who releases their findings for free [stanford.edu]. So, yes, you as part of the public can access the information you helped discover for free.

Even if Sony WAS a scientific conglomerate trying to find a cure, would you really want to put a hamper on reducing millions of deaths just because you don't want them to earn mo

Guarenteed

[Renraku (518261)]

I guarentee that it will be shipped on by default but have an option in the PS3 BIOS to use it during downtime or not. Besides, who leaves their consoles on at all times?

My personal opinion

[eclectro (227083)]

is that this might be a good idea, if the program doesn't contain a rootkit.

Potential power costs?

[David Horn (772985)]

I don't know how much power a PS3 pull at full whack, but I reckon it's got to be along the lines of 500W. If they get 10 million people running this during the day, that's an addition 5GW of load on the electrical system. If you own one, and let it run 18 hours a day for the year, then at 20c per kW/h you're looking at $750 on your power bill.

Re:Potential power costs?

[mspohr (589790)]

I guess you are exaggerating to illustrate your point but the power consumption of the PS3 is unlikely to be 500 watts (50 to 100 watts is more likely) and your power cost of 20 cents is two or three times what most people pay (I pay 10 cents in California). Your estimate is probably 10x to 20x too high.

Yes, it would cost electricity but most likely only a few dollars a month, not $750 a year and most likely wouldn't burn out the electricy grid.

Re:Potential power costs?

[radish (98371)]

I agree that 500W is a little much, but according to this page [dxgaming.com] the 360 takes 145W. I'd imagine the PS3 to be similar.

I feel like a horrible person...

[wbren (682133)]

... but this doesn't affect my opinion of the PS3 at all. It will be late and wayyyy overpriced. I guess it's nice that Sony is doing this, but anyone can do the same thing without spending $500+ on a gaming console.

Re:

[thrillseeker (518224)]

anyone can do the same thing without spending $500+ on a gaming console

Exactly how would you get this level of performance/watts ratio without spending the few hundred dollars? You'd need to run your current PC much longer to perform the same calculations. From TFA the performance is roughly 100x current capability.

Dupe

[pembo13 (770295)]

Even I know that this is a dupe. [slashdot.org]

I don't think I would buy a PS3 for myself unless it was going cure someone I knew of an ailment

The next supercomputer...

[RetlawST (997563)]

...will be built using a cluster of PS3s.
 
  This cluster will be able to help cure cancer AND allow Madden 2007 to play an entire season in three minutes.

Pass

[mac123 (25118)]

I'm waiting for the project that will have me use all of the spare time for my incredibly overpowered home CPUs (and with it ample amounts of electricity) to 'fight global warming'!

Re:

[Isao (153092)]

That would be the BBC Climate Prediction Project [bbc.co.uk].

You may sign up now. Arrgh.

new slogan

[Darth Maul (19860)]

It's only a matter of time until they reveal their new slogan: "PS3. Won't somebody think of the children?".

Is it tax deductible...

[Chabil Ha' (875116)]

If so, buying a PS3 could pay for itself over time. Seriously, I would signup, have them e-mail me CPU usage statistics muliplied by an industry standard rate as a reciept. They're happy to have CPU cycles, I'm happy to have the tax deduction.

Now if that's the case, can something similar be done with other CPU cycle donations to other projects? I have a multi-core server that spends most of its time idle. Might as well put to some use, eh?

A Better Idea

[ffejie (779512)]

A better idea... Buy a Xbox 360 or a Wii. (Buy em used after a couple of months!) Save yourself anywhere from $200-$400 and donate the money to cancer research, or the F@H project if you really like that project. No, you don't get to have the PS3, but, your $200 will go a lot further for research than your cycles will over a couple of years. Also, take the $25-$100 you'll save on electricity (or whatever people in this discussion have been calculating) and donate that. With the $500 or so you'll give to research over the next 3 years, you'll be able to say for sure that you helped out. And, you get to cut out the middle men (Sony getting cash on the hardware and the Electric Co for providing the electricity).

Added benefit: Tax write-off! I want to see you try to write-off the additional ~$100 in electricity you're donating.

Not HAHA

[eldavojohn (898314)]

Well, this article is kind of a dupe [slashdot.org] but the CNN article has a lot of new information.

One of tidbits is that the researchers have to dumb down the PC distributed version so that it runs on even the slowest computer. In fact, they have to play to the lowest common denominator. With the PS3, it's standardized so they can inch out every bit of performance from the chipset. On top of that, they know there will only be on GPU so they can write the renderer for that and you'll see the protein folding on your screen. It will look all science-y and you can navigate around it. People might like this as a screen saver or conversation piece. The researchers are also hoping that it attracts people to also install it on their computers to aid in this endeavor.

Re:Not HAHA

[moro_666 (414422)]

While probably 10% offtopic, i still hope this gets out to all the science app builders :

  Please make your applications scalable in % of cpu power used :)

  I have a laptop here, cute 3200 bogomips under it's belly, but i refuse to burn my system's cpu in favor of curing cancer. I wouldn't mind to give you 10% or 20% of the cpu power, because that wouldn't heat it up, but your applications that burn at 110% of the power available, are just not usable for most partly "idle" machines. Moreover, you'd get a bunch of workforce from fileservers which are idling on the cpu 90% of the time .. but as long as your applications just slay their performance in cold blood and cause them to run at nearly nuclear explosion temperatures (renicing the process will help against the first issue sometimes, but not the latter), you are just losing possible helpers.

  One minimalistic "sleep" or "delay" into your mainloop, and whoop's , you're going to get more work done than you have ever before. Until then, nothing will fold on my machines over here.

   

Re:Not HAHA

[thePowerOfGrayskull (905905)]

Why would you insist on "scaling" applications when you could just set the priority(win)/nice(*nix) level lower? (i.e., higher nice value in linux, lower priority setting in windows). That way, it will always yield to every other system that needs to use the CPU. (And nevermind the belief that a process can use only 'part' of a single-core CPU)

Re:Not HAHA

[proxima (165692)]

Why would you insist on "scaling" applications when you could just set the priority(win)/nice(*nix) level lower? (i.e., higher nice value in linux, lower priority setting in windows). That way, it will always yield to every other system that needs to use the CPU. (And nevermind the belief that a process can use only 'part' of a single-core CPU)

Because even if my computer isn't running anything important, running it at 100% CPU usage will invoke the full cooling capacity of the system. For a desktop, this means a louder fan noise. For a laptop, however, it may not be well-suited to 24/7 100% CPU utilization. The fans are small and can get _very_ noisy. The bottom of the laptop can get so hot as to be unusable on your lap; quite possibly, you could shorten the lifespan of your components.

Re:

[HTMLSpinnr (531389)]

Don't forget the power consumption increase when any computing device is running at 100%. That heat's coming from somewhere.

Re:Not HAHA

[MustardMan (52102)]

Did you even READ the post you replied to? He specifically states why "nice" isn't a solution. Nice doesn't stop a program from using all the CPU, it just stops it from using CPU when another program wants it. His complaint is constantly having a system peaked near 100% CPU usage, which produces shitloads of heat, shortening processor life.

Re:Not HAHA

[Anonymous Freak (16973)]

BOINC [berkeley.edu] allows such a setting, but it's buried deep within the settings.

The United Devices [ud.com] client has it at 50% by default, and is easier to configure.

Re:Not HAHA

[Lord Crc (151920)]

One minimalistic "sleep" or "delay" into your mainloop, and whoop's , you're going to get more work done than you have ever before. Until then, nothing will fold on my machines over here.

The problem is that this won't work well for Folding@Home. It doesn't work like distributed.net where one can just assign some part of the keyspace to one client and have it work on that. The work units returned are used to generate new work units. That's why they have such "tight" deadlines. See their FAQ [stanford.edu] for details.

So for Folding@Home, you'll most likely end up past the deadline (unless you got a VERY spiffy laptop), and not helping all that much (although your work will be used for double-checking afaik).

However for other projects, distributed.net style, it would work out nicely, and I belive BOINC already has an option for this (the new F@H client might aswell, I can't remember, all my folding is done on my linux box now, and I haven't touched it in ages).

Re:

[smoker2 (750216)]

but as long as your applications just slay their performance in cold blood and cause them to run at nearly nuclear explosion temperatures (renicing the process will help against the first issue sometimes, but not the latter), you are just losing possible helpers.

Hmmm, nuclear temparatures, eh.

My home server is on 24/7/365 and runs F@H. Gkrelm reports my temps. at 52.0, 27.0, and 51.5

It's reniced to 10 so that means it is actually running at a nice value of 19 ....

25848 smoker 39 19 89192 48m 1152 R

Re:

[drinkypoo (153816)]

One of tidbits is that the researchers have to dumb down the PC distributed version so that it runs on even the slowest computer.

That's not true, and I wish people would refuse to assume that it is.

Researchers may have chosen to dumb down the PC version, but it is a triviality to load a different DLL or call different code based on architecture or, hopefully, actually based on capabilities.

There is no reason whatsoever that the PC version can't make the best out of everything from a 386 up to a Co

Re:

[kirun (658684)]

Don't Sony make a loss on the hardware? Maybe they're banking on the Blu-Ray components dropping sharply in price by the time PS3s start breaking down, but it looks to me more like an attempt to get one bit of good PR not written by Official Sony Fanboy Magazine. Note that Wii will also be always-on, but Nintendo have taken the opposite approach, aiming for minimal standby power usage, waking only to receive downloads of freshly minted swag for your games. So, if there's some evil MTBF conspiracy, two compa

If I can run a C compiler, it's a computer.

[tepples (727027)]

Ken Kutaragi said that the PS3 not a console, it is a computer!

When I can run GCC on it without using rare, expensive add-on hardware that Sony quickly discontinues *cough*PS2 Linux*cough*, then it's a computer. Until then, it's a locked-in console.

Proprietary bootloader

[tepples (727027)]

Well, it's open source

The Linux® kernel is free software, but the bootloader isn't. Likewise, I'm 99 percent sure that the BIOS in your PC is proprietary software.

Re:asfaasf

[ArcherB (796902)]

I'm going to pay $600 so I can run a second copy of something that's already spinning away on my PC right now?

No, you are going to pay $600 to play games and run Linux on a Cell processor. The F@H thing is just a perk that you can either use to double (or quadruple) what you are doing on your PC right now or not. If you pay $600 for a PS3 just to do F@H, you are an idiot.

Re:

[nine-times (778537)]

Well, you're right and we shouldn't be feeding cows to other cows. However, I'm inclined to say that it might be nice if the unfortunate souls who have the disease, you know.... wouldn't die a horrible death. I know it's rare, and should become more rare if we start showing some sense in raising cattle, but, you know... if they could maybe cure it along the way to finding a cure for another disease, I wouldn't consider it a waste of time.

Re:

[Forge (2456)]

OK. Let's try to cure Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. If Mad Cow disease is cured as a side benefit, great.

As for the comparison with AIDS. The behavior modifications required are of an entirely different nature. You see, the "culprits" now are individuals, the majority of who are impoverished and under educated with little communications equipment available to begin with. So even getting condoms and the message of responsible sex to them is tough.

As if that wasn't bad enough the victims are usually the same pe

Re:

[Forge (2456)]

As a further clarification. The Wikipedia page on Mad cow disease [wikipedia.org] lists the countries with infected cattle and/or infected people.

Interestingly the poorest country on the list is Thailand [cia.gov], with a GDP per capita of $8,300.00 (Middle income).

Strangely enough they only made the list for the human form of the disease, suggesting that it came from imported beef.

Re:How the..

[kpearson (760708)]

Have you read anything about Folding@home [stanford.edu] before you started criticizing it? It is run by a public university, not a privately-held organization. The university will not profit from the research. If you can't bother to learn about the project, at least read it's FAQ [stanford.edu].

Re:

[John Harrison (223649)]

Leland Stanford Junior University is a private university. Though not a junior university. I can assure you that my loans would all be paid off now if it were a public university.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

> Because privately held research would like to use my PS3 for free and then make money from it when
> they discover something - without any intention to charge less $$ for the treatment / cure in
> exchange for all this free computing?

Once a medical discovery is made it doesn't go away. Yes, it is a money tree for YEARS for the company with the patents. YES, a lot of the research was paid for by others. NO, they won't share. YES, they will charge an insane amount for it.

But a new treatment is A NEW