Sony announced on Thursday that its PlayStation 3 video game consoles will be enhanced to join a supercomputing network researching causes of cancer, Alzheimer's and other incurable diseases. Sony will release a software update by end of March which will allow users to devote their consoles' idle time to a Stanford University quest for diseases caused by "misfolded" proteins.The PS3 packs some serious computing power as its cell processor are around 10 times powerful than an average desktop computer. The program codenamed 'Foldingà home' harnesses idle time of Internet-linked home computers to use the combined power to perform in months protein-folding simulations that would take a single machine decades to complete.

PlayStation 3 console software will let users click on a "Foldingà home" icon on their television screens to have their machines devote their computing power to medical research whenever games aren't being played. The resulting network will be something similar to the SETI network which uses the combined processing power of 5 million computers to decode and study radio telescope signals.
Did you know that In December 2001, a Web site reported that a scarcity of PlayStation 2 consoles was partly due to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's use of the game machines. Some 4,000 of the game consoles found their way to Iraq to be used for research of weapons of mass destruction, said the report.
Via - Medlaunches