Folding at Home / Life With PlayStation PS3 Research - Take 1

[SKFU]

I just started to take a look at Folding@Home / Life with PlayStation as part of my PS3 research. There are several little details which are pretty interesting...

One thing which got me interested, is that the "game" has more permissions than any other game or application. Normal games do not have access to the root of /dev_hdd0/ but F@H has.

It can read, write and execute which was found out as it creates a folder called /cntlnk/ in /dev_hdd0/.

There it caches several music files you play while running the application. This is handled via a SQL Lite Format 3 DB (db1.1.sqlite) in /NPIA00002/USRDIR/data/wlop/.

Another thing is, that F@H/LWP can override the PARAM.SFO. Normally the option window when u press triangle in XMB on a game just reads the data, PARAM.SFO passes to it.

But here, the automatic start option is not loaded via the .sfo. It seems it comes from an external XML file in the game directory.

The last I want to write about now is, that older F@H versions were able to control the SPU's partly. For example it was possible to define how many SPU's are used at all.

These are just some points that came up so far. I will keep you updated when there is more!

-SKFU



More PlayStation 3 News...

[worstenbroodje]

The last I want to write about now is, that older F@H versions were able to control the SPU's partly. For example it was possible to define how many SPU's are used at all.

That could be useful for a possible exploit..

[PS3 News]

It's nice to see you are still investigating F@H/LWP ideas SKFU... I remember you first starting on them back when the PS3 Debug Client was posted. Keep up the good work!

[shummyr]

This is simply amazing that something, and yet another possible exploit.

[mekisi]

There are 5 SPUs in use..

[CyanCaze]

There are 5 SPUs in use..

7 SPU's in use, 8 in total.

[STARS]

7 SPU's in use, 8 in total.

Yes but in linux only 6 SPU's, with the exploit we can, actually use 8 thats correct.

[SKFU]

ps3 uses 7 spu's. 6 in general plus one for the hv. 8 spu on cell processor is deactivated/defect/not in use.

[mekisi]

i know that there are 7 spus in use but the codes that SKFU posts there are 5 spus in use i underline where it writes in the capture.

[B4rtj4h]

Good finding. I think F@H is a serious flaw for the PS3 ... first we were able to install PS3 downloads with a hacked link and now this