Sony Announces 1 Million Folding@home Users

Sony has announced that over one million PlayStation 3 users have registered to participate in Stanford University's Folding@home project since its launch on March 7th, 2007 -- according to the company, this equates to about 3,000 PS3 owners registering per day, or 2 new registered users every minute worldwide. Leland Stanford Junior University in the U.S. first announced the collaboration with Sony in August of 2006. The Folding@home program is used by the university to aid in calculations relating to the study of protein folding and protein folding diseases. Folding@home helps study protein folding and related diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington's disease, cystic fibrosis and certain forms of cancer. Once the data is processed by PCs and PlayStation 3s running the software, the information is sent back via the Internet to the project’s central computer. Vijay Pande, associate professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead, commented, “Since partnering with SCEI, we have seen our research capabilities increase by leaps and bounds through the continued participation of Folding@home users. 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.”