Farewell to Folding
by SealWyf, HSM Editor
You don’t expect an operating system update to feel like a slap in the face. You don’t expect it to sound like a door slamming, cutting you off from something you love. And you certainly don’t expect it to be so casual – a “By the way, all this is ending. Tomorrow.”
PS3 System Software Update (v.4.30) may state that it’s mostly about displaying your PS Vita trophies on the PS3. And I’m sure that’s the take-away for most gamers. But it also marks the end of the Life With PlayStation application, arguably the most-ignored icon on the XMB. And, with it, the end of Sony’s support of the Folding@home project.
Despite the name, Folding@home had nothing to do with PlayStation Home, at least not directly. It’s a distributed computing project, run by Stanford University. And what it did was use spare processing cycles to simulate protein folding — to study how it works, where it can go wrong, and predict the effects of potential medicines. Incorrectly-folded proteins have been implicated in a large number of human diseases, from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, to Huntington’s disease and cancer. By joining the Folding@home project, your PC, Mac or PS3 can do real science, and contribute to real discoveries. All with no effort on your part, and no expense except a little electricity.
There were never many PS3 consoles folding proteins, compared to PC’s. But their input was much greater than their numbers would indicate. The PS3 processor is designed to do exactly this kind of work, and it does it exceptionally well. A PS3 could simulate protein folding 20 times as fast as a typical PC. For five years, our gaming consoles were the workhorses of the Folding@home project, and they produced some serious science, research which is now starting to pay off in scientific understanding and drug design.
The Sony press release that announced the Folding project’s end quoted Dr. Vijay Pande, the project’s research lead, about the PS3 console’s contributions:
“The PS3 system was a game changer for Folding@home, as it opened the door for new methods and new processors, eventually also leading to the use of GPUs.
“We have had numerous successes in recent years. Specifically, in a paper just published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, we report on tests of predictions from earlier Folding@home simulations, and how these predictions have led to a new strategy to fight Alzheimer’s disease.
“The next steps, now underway at Stanford, are to take this lead compound and help push it towards a viable drug. It’s too early to report on our preliminary results there, but I’m very excited that the directions set out in this paper do appear to be bearing fruit in terms of a viable drug (not just a drug candidate).”
Being a somewhat geeky individual, I had discovered Folding@home early on. And when I joined the Homeling Collective, I encouraged them to participate. The results of that project are described in the HSM article “Homelings Folding”. It’s a dramatic story, filled with pride and betrayal, courage and eventual triumph. That article appeared over a year ago; since then, the Homeling folding team has gone on to scale the heights of folding achievement. Our most recent accomplishment was passing six million points, which put us in the top 0.6% of folding teams worldwide, or about 1,300 of 216,000.
Alas, there will be no more such landmarks. Some Homelings may continue to fold on their PC’s, but the power simply isn’t there. Team Homelings is no more.
It would be easy to be angry with Sony about this. But I have been following the news, and I am sympathetic. During the financial quarter that ended in August, 2012 (2012 Q1 in their reckoning), Sony lost $312 million. That’s a 77% decline in total revenue, a prodigious financial hit. The part of Sony that affects us most, the gaming division, lost $45 million, when PS3 sales declined and the PS Vita simply didn’t take off. On October 19, Sony announced they would lay off 10,000 workers, or about 6% of the company workforce. Faced with such drastic cutbacks and economies, anything that is not pulling its weight had to go. Deleting the unappreciated Life With PlayStation was a no-brainer.
To Sony’s credit, they didn’t simply pull the plug, though it might seem that way to those of us who learned about this one day before it happened. They did at least discuss the matter with Stanford University, though apparently no arrangement could be made to continue the program. One senses a certain sorrow in the press release, something that comes very close to an apology. It can’t have been an easy decision for anyone.
So, where do we go from here? Do we simply sigh and walk away, and let the door close behind us? Do we say, “It could have been worse — it could have been Home that was terminated”? That’s certainly one way to look at it. Everything ends eventually, and there’s often very little we can do about it. In Home, we are still mourning the end of Xi and the loss of Central Plaza. Getting all emo about it won’t do anybody any good. We remember these things fondly, but we move on.
However, I wonder if there might be a solution, one that taps into the marketplace and gives Sony some much-needed cash-flow. Because distributed computing is a big thing, even though all we saw of it on the PS3 was Folding@home.
I have real-life friends who donate spare computer cycles to the SETI@home project, a search for intelligent life in the universe. Recently I was reading about Electric Sheep, a project that uses distributed computing to produce evolving artworks. There are many, many distributed computing projects out there, from the tiny to the massive. And many of them could probably benefit from the sheer computational horsepower of the PS3 processor.
So here’s my idea: what if the PlayStation Store included distributed computing clients? It would be nice if they were free, but that is probably too much to expect in today’s economic climate. But what if they were reasonably priced, and provided the necessary hooks into the host servers to download new projects and upload results, as Folding@home has done?
And what if Sony treated this as a game, with top performers acknowledged on leaderboards, or with trophies? Fold ten Work Units for a Bronze, a hundred for a Silver, a thousand for a Gold? What if project participants got special XMB avatars? What if they could earn custom Home content?
We know how to motivate gamers. What if we treated science as a game, and rewarded it accordingly? Would you spend a few dollars to keep folding proteins, if you could get some trophies for it? How about an animated protein companion to follow you around the Hub? How about if your stats, and your team’s stats, were displayed in Home, for all to see?
I honestly think this could work. Is there anyone out there who can make it happen?
October 23rd, 2012 by SealWyf_ | 19 comments
SealWyf is a museum database programmer, who has been active in online communities since before the Internet, and in console gaming since the PS1. In games, she prefers the beautiful and quirky, and anything with a strong storyline. She is obsessed with creating new aesthetic experiences in PlayStation Home.
Really good ideas at the end there Seal, and an enjoyable read. I used the folding program now and then in the beginning. But I know how much data is needed to make even small hops of progress in protein folding, it takes millions and millions of scenarios just to get a clue! But that’s why this project was such a good one, it really put a dent in the research. Sure, you can say “Pfft! PC’s can do that anyway” but the point here is that it was a new innovation for a games console When the PS3 first came out it was a truly remarkable machine. I’m convinced that it was Folding@home that gave it the “It Only Does Everything” slogan; it played games, movies, music, stored photos, ran Linux, played old-gen discs, told you the weather, streamed TV, kept you fit (lol) etc etc and yes, cured cancer!
But slowly, these features are being stripped away bit by bit. So many gamers out there whingeing that “we just want it to play gaaaames”. Sad really, that it has to go this way. I’m not sure if cost-cutting is the real reason for this features removal, but whatever the reason, it’s a true shame that our research into these diseases that afflict or kill so many of us will be hampered.
Maybe the PS4’s slogan could be “It Only Plays Games… Coz When We Innovate You Spoiled Gamers Complain”
Thanks, Krazy. I’m still feeling moderately devastated over this. Amazing to put so much emotional investment into an optional science project. And I can only imagine how the researchers in California are feeling, having a major source of computation ripped away from them.
The PS3 is such a nice little computation engine. They’ve been chained together by the Pentagon to build budget supercomputers. And they were awesome for distributed computing. I really wish this program could have been expanded to include other projects. Those “Electric Sheep” images are gorgeous!
Trophies for science. I like it! It certainly has more appeal than the digital certificates that Vijay Pande signed and clearly more of an achievement than getting married in Skyrim.
I think it’s a sad day that folding home is gone. It was something that made the PS3 really special and more than the sum of it’s parts. I remember seeing my PS3 working on folding home for the first time and thinking, what an amazing world we live in.
This is a complete shame,I enjoyed the life with PlayStation app. I mostly used it for news and weather but I did dip my toe in the folding at home sub-app. Life with PlayStation was under appreciated and again all I can say is its a shame.
I heard somewhere about gamers solving realworld problems doing something like Folding@home. Making things that could seriously contribute to life and presenting it like a game is a really good idea imo.
I am sorry to hear that Folding@home is gone. It did contribute something worth while.
I really do think it would be interesting to see a game that presented gamers with a particular R/L problem. With all parameters and varibles, to see how the problem is solved. It would be interesting and possibly awesome!
Here’s another example of gamers doing science:
Crowdsourcing science: how gamers are changing scientific discovery
We need more of this, not less.
I would buy a distributed computing client. Particularly if it benefited Astronomy or Medicine. I have them on my computer and on my smart device, I was using folding on the PS3 and it is sad to see it go, but I still run in on my pc.
Another really sad decision. But again the decision itself is not what upset me the most. The absence of any comment from Sony is worst.
There is surely a “good” reason behind it. Could be technical or others. It’s in the little things that we see someone (or a company) true nature, and right now the little things are piling up.
Someone will probably tell me that Sony have all the legal right to do what they want with my machine. I also have the right to be upset about it.
I just downloaded v4.30 this morning and life/folding@home are still there… for now!
My understanding was that the Life With Playstation program will be terminated before the end of the month, but the 4.30 update prevents new PS3’s from receiving it. But we shall have to wait and see what actually happens.
What I read, dont remember where. Was something like, “v4.30 on november 1st”. So I was a little disapointed to be prompted for v4.30 this morning… Well as you said, wait and see…
Woah I was not aware of this feature. I would have defiantly contributed some of my time to it.
Ha I love the achievement idea! Cured Alzheimer’s trophy
Awesome article! This site is great! Had to join.
it would have been more efficient to use computers designed for the job.
Like so many things in life, we often don’t fully appreciate something until we are faced with losing it. Regrettably, I didn’t fold proteins as frequently as I could or should have.
By some digital oddity, the Life with Playstation icon was still on my XMB after the update. I clicked and it opened. So I am adding all that I can until the cosmos realizes it’s error and takes it away.
Thank you, SealWyf, for introducing me to Folding. If Sony were to offer it in the Store, I surely would purchase this bit of gaming goodness.
I’ve noticed that the application is still running on my PS3. Have there been any updates? Most websites I’ve searched don’t seem to recognize the significance of dropping this project from the only console to support any form of distributed computing.
Why is Sony preventing me to use my hardware to do things — I the customer — wish to do with my own property?
How does F@H affect their revenue? Why terminate a useful, optional tool?
If YouTube and Hulu et al are available as free apps, why not just make F@H an optional app?
Another reason to just get a cheaper BlueRay player and abandon Sony products. It’s clear that the customer can’t be trusted to make their own decisions about what they do with equipment they payed for.
After the Linux block, do you think anyone was surprised the Vita flopped.
Keep alienating your customers Sony and they will find other products to use.
Personally I was really gutted when I received the system update and then attempted to go and checkout life with playstation. I wanted to hear that familiar moonlight theme and see all the glowing users across the globe, I wanted to be able to read global news and view weather in the lush environment. Now all I have to reminisce is a few youtube videos out there which show the interface. But browsing late at night and seeing a dull little glow somewhere across the globe in the remotest of locations used to fill me with a sense of community. Nice article :).