173w ago - 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

203w ago - First of all, Happy July 4th to our American viewers! As we all know, Folding At Home on the PS3 is really a beast - it knows how to use the hardware efficiently, making the PS3 one of the top clients in the entire project.

The PS3 Debug / Test version has the included files, sprx's, and the Eboot.bin all decrypted. You can now peel apart the files to see how the Folding@Home client utilizes the power of the PS3.

An interesting note: the configuration file outlines that 6 SPU's are in use, as well as one Raw SPU.

It begs the question, is it 6 SPU's in total, or 6+1 = 7 ?

Download: PS3 Debug Folding At Home (USA) Client

It becomes much more interesting if its 6+1, beckoning rumors of the 8th "disabled" SPU not being disabled at all, but actually, secretly being used for security, while the 7th SPU, that we all thought was for security, was just a front.

It is a bit of a stretch, but it is something to keep in mind while you dig through the Folding@Home client, looking for goodies.

Since this is an old version, when updating on a Development unit from...

237w ago - Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) announced that the company's support for Stanford University's Folding@Home project on PlayStation 3, including the Folding@Home application developed and designed by SCEI specifically for PS3, received the "Good Design Gold Award 2008" from the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization today.

In addition to the "Good Design Gold Award" for the Folding@Home project on PS3, the PlayStation Network logo and PlayStation Store user interface design have also received this year's "Good Design Award."

Press Release: SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT'S SUPPORT FOR FOLDING@HOME™ PROJECT ON PLAYSTATION®3 RECEIVES THIS YEAR'S "GOOD DESIGN GOLD AWARD"

Tokyo, November 6, 2008 - Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) announced that the company's support for Stanford University's Folding@home™　project on PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3®), including the Folding@home application developed and designed by SCEI specifically for PS3, received the "Good Design Gold Award 2008" from the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization today.

Through Folding@home for PS3, users are able to enjoy the fascinating visualization of the global map as it changes in appearance as time elapses. Users can also visually identify the PS3 Folding@home...

264w ago - Nvidia may be working towards making its newly acquired PhysX technology the gaming physics standard, but AMD reckons that there are plenty of other alternatives out there, including using Stanford University's and highly parallel Brook language for gaming physics.

AMD's technical director of sales and marketing, Giusseppe Amato, told Custom PC that Brook 'allows you to use the parallel SIMD (single instruction multiple data) array that we have in every stream processor engine...so basically you can make any type of 3D pictorial mathematics calculation. Can it also be used for the physics of the game? The answer is yes.'

Brook is currently used by Stanford University in the GPU Folding@home client, and the director of the Folding@home project, Vijay Pande, told us that there's no reason why it couldn't work on Nvidia GPUs too. However, Amato says that while the kernel of Brook was used for the Folding@home project, AMD has developed an extended version called Brook Plus, which could be used for gaming physics, as well as many other tasks.

'We took Brook from Stanford,' explained Amato, 'and we extended it. It's an open language, and the libraries are now starting to be built, so this is all very promising.' According to Amato, Brook Plus is still hardware independent,...

275w ago - Sony has issued a subtle update to its PlayStation 3 Folding@Home client today. Now at version 1.31, the update patches up an issue regarding network communication errors.

When communication with Stanford University's servers is unsuccessful, the application will now try an effective method of attempting to reconnect based on the specific error condition.

To install the update, simply restart or launch the Folding@Home client if you aren't already running it and follow the on-screen prompts to install.