Playstation's Serious side Fighting Disease

Anttaru

Always thinking
Adventurer
Joined
Jul 11, 2004
Messages
1,731
Age
48
Location
Toronto Canada
I've read in the other post how many of you dosn't seem to understand how the PS3 will contribute to this scientific research. Very much like 3D animation, it can take severals days to obtain 1 frame of animation. Looking at a pixar project, running at 30fps, how do they complete a project when each frame renders at 90 hours a frame .... ? Lots of computers is the answer to that.

To dumb it down a bit, Pixar can have 1 second of animation in 90 hours, simply by using 30 computers.

.
.
.

The news coverage was about the Cell processor being used in a super computer designed by IBM, the Cell will be running at 1,000 trillion calculations per second. Now we're talking about the same chip in the PS3 except it will be running as fast as 500 PS3s.

The article regarding PS3 contribution to mankind stated:

Improperly formed proteins are linked to a number of diseases, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gherig's disease, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad-cow disease

Scientists are using computer simulations instead, but that has its own limitations. It takes about a day for a computer to simulate a nanosecond (one-billionth of a second) so it would take about 30 years for that computer to complete one simulation.


PS3 will have a software currently known as Folding@home. It runs when we leave the PS3 on.

What is actually happening, is a server sends information to the PS3 so it can render out the information needed to run the simulation. This ofcoarse happens in smaller portions, when the information is complete the PS3 will send the information back.

The rendered information is then added to hundreads of thousands of other submissions from hundreads of thousands of Cell processors that live in PS3's.

The result is time ripping as we would have a difficult time imagining how much processing power has been used.

Simulations that would take years to complete, will now be done in a matter of days or even less. And that is what will allow health studies to move on.

Aside from the fact the PS3 is a gaming system, what Sony is doing is increadable. I'll leave my PS3 on all the time.

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/fun.games/09/18/playstation.folding/index.html
 
ah, cool

and Neo's comment makes me laugh and sad cause so many are too "me me me" to care.. so few look at things and say "what can I do to help humanity in someway?" *shrugs* ah well.. I'm not much better.. but I feel I'm to f*cked up to be of any help x.x
 
EDIT: Nevermind... At first it looked like this wasn't a consentual feature, but it is.
 
Last edited:
Elemmire said:
ah, cool

and Neo's comment makes me laugh and sad cause so many are too "me me me" to care.. so few look at things and say "what can I do to help humanity in someway?" *shrugs* ah well.. I'm not much better.. but I feel I'm to f*cked up to be of any help x.x
No one buys a PS3 to help with medical research, they buy it to play games and at the moment that's where most people think the PS3 is lacking. What the PS3 is doing is nothing special, since there's been similar programs around for over 10 years; it's a nice little feature but certainly not a selling point. The people might just want to save electricity by turning off their PS3 when they're not using it as well.
 
I was actually making a more general statement, Baja. Today, most people in general don't think at all about or ask themselves the question "what can I do to help the species" or things of that sort. Most are very.. "what can I do for me, when can I get the next little gadget, what can I do to make me happy, me me me, my my my" etc.

Even that proves it "oh, I'll just save a little money and electricity" rather than leaving it on. It really doesn't make the electricity bill insane as far as I can tell (from the amount of power needed). Seems no more than a computer would require to be left on and most leave their computers on constantly these days too.
 
I never said I was better or claimed to help, I just recognize most are. XD hell.. I think I'm far too fucked up TO be any help to anyone
 
OH MY GOD, SO LIKE, THIS FOLDING@HOME THING IS SUCH A NEW AND AMAZING IDEA

ONLY, NOT REALLY, BECAUSE IT'S BEEN AROUND FOR YEARS!

Most high end PCs will run folding@home faster than a single PS3 will.

Also, Cell wasn't designed just for the fucking PS3.
 
So instead of buying a ps3 why don't they just buy and use the cell technology?
 
Tagrineth said:
OH MY GOD, SO LIKE, THIS FOLDING@HOME THING IS SUCH A NEW AND AMAZING IDEA

ONLY, NOT REALLY, BECAUSE IT'S BEEN AROUND FOR YEARS!

Most high end PCs will run folding@home faster than a single PS3 will.

Also, Cell wasn't designed just for the fucking PS3.

Very nasty language Tagrineth. You always start with a negative persona.

1. I never said the Cell is only in the PS3. I wrote about IBM using it at higher speeds as a matter of fact. State you're reason.

2. I own a high end PC and at 3.0 Ghz it cannot process anything faster than the cell in a PS3 claimes what it can do multiple, which is GFLOPS.


No one said Folding@home is brand new. Having it work automatically under the PS3's cell peacefully is an excellent idea. If you don't have anything positive to say in my threads Tagrineth, then stay out of them. I'm tired of pointing you in the right direction all the time.
 
Tagrineth said:
Most high end PCs will run folding@home faster than a single PS3 will.

In some cases that is true, but since the PS3 doesn't run any other processes when in "afk" mode, it can dedicate all of its memory to that single one, thus making it better then high end home PC's.

Hell, a high end home PC will have a hard time running PS2 games, even though it have better specs. The difference is that PS3 is onlymade to do 1 thing (well, 2 now), and that is play games (and do that research thingy).
 
Anttaru said:
Very nasty language Tagrineth. You always start with a negative persona.

1. I never said the Cell is only in the PS3. I wrote about IBM using it at higher speeds as a matter of fact. State you're reason.

2. I own a high end PC and at 3.0 Ghz it cannot process anything faster than the cell in a PS3 claimes what it can do multiple, which is GFLOPS.


No one said Folding@home is brand new. Having it work automatically under the PS3's cell peacefully is an excellent idea. If you don't have anything positive to say in my threads Tagrineth, then stay out of them. I'm tired of pointing you in the right direction all the time.

I didn't say the Cell is only in PS3 either. Learn to read, please. I said it wasn't just designed for PS3.

The thread title and OP make this such a fucking PS3 praise thread. Folding@home wasn't Sony's idea by any stretch, and the bulk of the benefits from Cell have nothing to do with PS3.

Fuck off with tripe like "The article regarding PS3 contribution to mankind stated:"

PS3's contribution to mankind... right... @home has existed for years, it isn't some magical PS3 contribution. Great, people can run @home clients on PS3 now. The majority don't even run distributed computing on their PCs.
 
Uzor said:
Hell, a high end home PC will have a hard time running PS2 games, even though it have better specs. The difference is that PS3 is onlymade to do 1 thing (well, 2 now), and that is play games (and do that research thingy).

Well, the PS3 wasn't made for that. It just so happens that someone developed software for it to do that, sort of like the Xbox wasn't made to run Linux, but it can.

Not to mention Emulation is the reason PS2 games run awfully. It's not a hardware issue, it's a software one. If SCE were to release a first party emulator, they would run smoothly, but the problem is all emulators are simply guess work on how the consoles process and run things.
 
Last edited:
Tagrineth said:
I didn't say the Cell is only in PS3 either. Learn to read, please. I said it wasn't just designed for PS3.

Well i never said you said that, But why bring it up in the 1st place ?

Sony founded it, and the Cell is what PS3 is all about. Sure Toshiba and IBM will make things with it too.

Tagrineth said:
The thread title and OP make this such a fucking PS3 praise thread.

That is correct, and that is why you're attacking.

Y'know Tagrineth. What Sony is doing really is great.

Tagrineth said:
Folding@home wasn't Sony's idea by any stretch,

I never said it was, and it dosn't matter who's idea it is. So long as it's being done. It will save time and money, then lives.

Tagrineth said:
and the bulk of the benefits from Cell have nothing to do with PS3.

/slap .... PS3 is putting hundreads of thousands of the Cell CPU out there. Stop fooling yourself. The Cell working in Folding@home is a beautiful thing. You're predijust for the PS3 drives you're very beliefs.

Tagrineth said:
Fuck off with tripe like "The article regarding PS3 contribution to mankind stated:"

PS3's contribution to mankind... right... @home has existed for years, it isn't some magical PS3 contribution. Great, people can run @home clients on PS3 now. The majority don't even run distributed computing on their PCs.

The PS3 doing this automatically is positive, on a mass scale at that. Yes it has existed, but it will be even FASTER now cause it's opening up to more people. When people understand what it means to leave the PS3 on. Many will do it. And the PS3 does it FASTER than PC, meaning fold@home will be better than ever. Faster and Better understand ?

It is a contribution to mankind. It's better than Uniceif. If thousnads choose to support this then so be it.

-The Cell is in the PS3
-The Cell will be out there by the millions, cause of the PS3
-The Network of PC's out there is great. (Super computer results)
-A Network of PS3's can be greater (Super computers marking a new level of Supercomputer work)
-A Network of PS3 and PC is better still.

I think you should remain silent now Tagrineth. And Stop fooling yourself into believing i'm doing this to spite someone cause i'm not. The topic of disscussion is indeed thread worthy.
 
Tagrineth said:
Folding@home wasn't Sony's idea by any stretch
Motion controll technology wasnt Nintendo's Idea by any stretch, but they're lauding it as the best idea for gaming since electricity.

They didnt invent it, they just applied a new perspective to it.
 
Skaw said:
Well, the PS3 wasn't made for that. It just so happens that someone developed software for it to do that, sort of like the Xbox wasn't made to run Linux, but it can.

Not to mention Emulation is the reason PS2 games run awfully. It's not a hardware issue, it's a software one. If SCE were to release a first party emulator, they would run smoothly, but the problem is all emulators are simply guess work on how the consoles process and run things.

The PC would still be slower then a PS3 with the same specs, since the PC is designed to run severa lthings at once, while the PS3 is made to only do 1.
 
Back
Top