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[UbiSoftologist]

Source: Wired (link )

Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are pretty cool toys, but with a simple adjustment they could both become powerful tools for science, helping researchers trace evidence of extraterrestrial life and testing possible cures for cancer. What's missing? A distributed computing client for game consoles.

The next generation of console gaming is going to see a huge increase in machine performance and overall computing power. Already planned for both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 are multiple 3.2-GHz PowerPC processors capable of handling advanced gaming and graphics simulations, along with out-of-the-box internet capabilities such as Xbox Live Silver. With all that horsepower in a machine that is used for only a fraction of a day, we should offer gamers a chance to put these unused resources to good use.

Distributed, or "grid," computing breaks down complex computing problems into small steps that can be solved in parallel by thousands or even millions of machines at once. It is basically the difference between hiring someone to label 1,000 envelopes for you and asking your friends to each label 100 when they get the chance. In this example, the hired person is the traditional mainframe crunching numbers, while your friends are personal computers all over the world that offer to crunch small packages of calculations when they're not busy.

Distributed computing isn't appropriate for all computing tasks. But experiments to date have proven that for so-called brute force calculations, it not only works -- it excels.

Distributed computing really made a name for itself with SETI@home. In this system, users anywhere could download a small screensaver program that would crunch data from radio observatories, looking for signs of extraterrestrial life. As you've probably figured, we haven't found any extraterrestrials yet, but the project proved a valid point: Distributed computing does in fact work...

....The tech community has always supported these efforts, but it's time distributed computing moved out into the rest of the world. Imagine the possibilities of millions of gaming consoles (Sony has sold more than 70 million PlayStation 2s) contributing to a community previously limited to thousands of capable processors.

How might we end up with a distributed computing client in our gaming systems? Making the client available on disc is the least intrusive means, but it will only target a subset of gaming system owners who go out of their way to get it, along with bearing the cost to produce the discs. A better method of delivery to the consumer would be to build the client as an update to firmware. As an optional update, users would be presented with an offer to install an approved distributed client of their choice into their system anytime they performed a critical system update over the internet.

So, let my console fold proteins or search for E.T. when I'm not using it. Let the public take a larger role in innovative research efforts. Most importantly, let me be able to end any console debate with, "So what if your system lets you watch movies and TV, listen to music and play games? My system cures cancer."

 

[LakeEarth]

If it were up to me I would find cancer and just beat the crap out of it. But since I can't do that, I'm just going to settle for a cancer patient, TAKE THAT CANCER! (WHAM!)

 

[newsguy]

"Curing cancer, the new missile launcher."

 

[koam]

I found out about an hour ago that a friend of mine died of cancer. I'd gladly volunteer for this.

 

[radioheadrule83]

The most important inventions (culturally) since the advent of print,
Initiating an era where more lines of vertical resolution means better gameplay,
You can jack into the Matrix with them,
and now... they cure cancer.

To be fair, I've heard of people doing these things before with PCs. I think you can contribute to all sorts of things with your processing power actually - I remember downloading one which helped with weather prediction. I've even seen that room of PS2s working in parallel too... but still. Wow.

Cancer Research are doing community research where they investigate communities with high instances of various cancers and have people in at various stages aside from those who never contract it: before they get the illness, and at various stages throughout. There are all sorts of contributing factors: lifestyle, exposure to free radicals, age, even your genes. What kind of mathetmatical thing are they hoping to crack here?

I found out about an hour ago that a friend of mine died of cancer. I'd gladly volunteer for this.

Sorry to read this man.

 

[monchi-kun]

 

[Geek]

I found out about an hour ago that a friend of mine died of cancer. I'd gladly volunteer for this.

You know about Google Compute? If you are interested in contributing processing time, you can do it now.

http://toolbar.google.com/dc/offerdc.html

 

[mrklaw]

considering those guys that made a supercomputer out of PS2s networked up, vectorising their code to get best advantage of the power, you could do some kick ass stuff with PS3.

Have some code like a turbo timer, that leaves the PS3 on for an hour each day after you've finished with it. It downloads some chunks of data to work on, crunches them and then shuts itself down.

 

[Dr_Cogent]

Grid.org's Cancer Research Project
Folding@Home Distributed Computing Project

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I admit years back I thought it'd be interesting to see SETI@Home running on Dreamcast... but how weird would it be to have multiple consoles running almost all of the time for distributed computing purposes.

 

[krypt0nian]

Sorry for the old bump but I just read an article on doing these distributed apps with a dual core PCs. You can assign the app to one core and still use the other core without any noticable affects.

Anyone up for this? My notebook is an Intel Core Duo and should be here on Wednesday.

Folding@home?

Does Folding@home run on dual processor machines? Yes, you can. Additional processors must run the console version (with the "-local" command-line argument if run on Windows). First, make additional directories for each processor and copy the FAH Console executable file into each. Then configure them with the -config switch, filling in settings for each. It is very important to make sure that under the "Advanced Settings" option each copy is given a unique machine ID (from 1 to 8). The first copy will default to a machine ID of 1, so additional copies should be given IDs of 2, 3, 4, etc. Each may then be run out of their installed directory, using the -local switch on windows.