Sony Playstation 3s are saving humanity?
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats
It looks like the distributed computing power of the PS3 with Folding @ Home, the Stanford run program researching protein folding, is about to reach a Petaflop. 1 quadrillion operations per second. The fastest supercomputer in the world just barely peaked at 1 petaflop.
As I write this the PS3 has probably eclipsed the 1 petaflop mark with Floating @ Home. Thats with the power of all other systems currently working for Folding @ Home, which is about 200 Teraflops (1/10th of a petaflop).
Currently 27000 PS3′s producing more than 600 teraflops of distributed power. Just imagine when 10% of currently sold PS3′s start running it, thats 200,000.
An new era of computing power for the research of disease is upon us. No longer are high level government institution the sole proprietors of tremendous processing potential.
