Allegedly, i.e.
so say the folks at
Folding@Home, the
distributed computing project simulating protein folding and other molecular dynamics to better understand diseases like Alzheimer's, ALS, Huntington's, Cystic Fibrosis, and many cancers or cancer-related syndromes. Howzat work? In late March and in tandem with Sony's 1.60 PS3 firmware update, Folding@Home released a PS3-compatible version of their data-crunching software. Computers running this client grab "work units," analyze them locally, then pump the results back up to Folding@Home's central servers. CPU performance, for those that care, is then aggregated by operating system type and listed in cumulative teraflops (TFLOPS). The Playstation 3 employs a Cell Broadband Engine with
seven processing elements, while the Xbox 360's Xenon custom PowerPC-derivative CPU wields only
three. Not surprisingly, Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford and Folding@Home project
speculated in March to Pro-G that the PS3's CPU architecture would gobble the 360's for breakfast.
http://blogs.pcworld.com/gameon/archives/004311.html