Folding@home hits a million users

3000 PS3 users signing up per day

5 February 2008 10:17 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Sony has announced that since PlayStation 3 took part in Stanford University's Folding@home project on March 22, 2007, the total number of registered users has reached over one million.

This equates to roughly 3000 PS3 users registering for Folding@home per day or two new registered users every minute worldwide.

"Since partnering with SCEI, we have seen our research capabilities increase by leaps and bounds through the continued participation of Folding@home users", said Vijay Pande, associate professor of chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead.

"Now we have over one million PS3 users registered for Folding@home, allowing us to address questions previously considered impossible to tackle computationally, with the goal of finding cures to some of the world's most life-threatening diseases. We are grateful for the extraordinary worldwide participation by PS3 and PC users around the globe."

The Folding@home project uses PS3's processing power to help calculate complex protein folding and misfolding that may lead to greater understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

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Gaming, PS3, Sony, Folding@home