PS3's Cell is known for its ability to process large amount of data and crunch numbers fast. Just like F1 game developer said, even with all the PC's hooked up it still takes a long time to test the game stages because everything loads so slowly so they hooked up seven PS3's to run this task when they were making a game.
Similarly, this will make it really ideal for research, and not just cancer research, but other fields where large amount of data that needs to be process as fast as possible. The human genome project comes to mind right away, eventhough the human genome is more or less sequenced, on going effort to sequence all our model organism is still ongoing as we speak.
So on cancer: (Read on...if you want to learn about cancer..could be boring for some people)
Looks like they are working on the molecular aspect of cancer, and now adays you can't get away from molecular biology if you want to take about cancer. I will try to make this as easy to understand as possible.
How do we acquire cancer and how the pS3 helps?
Cancer is acquired by a series of mutations on either the proto-oncogenes (Gas pedal of the cell division) and tumor suppressing gene (emergency for cell division). When these two forces of nature is out of whack, the cell will divide uncontrollably and thus cancerous tumor will form. (too much gas, or too little break).
Molecular Aspect and how PS3 helps to calculate: In order to understand how the PS3 can help, i will just use one example which will serve to illustrate what they maybe trying to do; although the article was vague but i think I have a good idea what they are doing.
Lets assume that the P53 protein (a important tumor suppressing protein) is mutated and the protein does NOT fold properly and loses its function. The folding of the protein has to do with interactions between amino acids that mades up the protein, through various kind of forces: hydrophobic,hydrophillic,electral static, H-bonding, di-sulfate bond. AMino acid confers these properties, and when there is a mutation in the amino acid this protein will not fold correctly and it will lose its function and ability to interact with OTHER proteins and its target receptors.
Now, if it was just one or two proteins or base pairs that are mutated, we can probably predict how the protein will fold and what conformational changes it has assumed, but we are talking abou the whole cell here, and there are hundeds of thousands of interaction going on at the same time, we need fast computers to simulate these scenarios for us. Not to mention that we do not even completely understand alot of these mechanisms. This amout of data processing will take forever on traditional PC achitectures, but with the PS3 Cell, they are saying that the new way to crunch data has allow them to calculate these numerous electro-static interaction between protein interaction, and how amino acid properties affects protein folding.
You ask so what? If we can figure out why a defective P53 cannot bind to its target protein, then we can contruct articifical nano-molecules that resembles the P53 and give them to the cancer patients. The new drug will then return the cell to its normal hemostasis and return the cell cycle to normal, thus stopping cancer formation.
I know I left out a whole crap load of details, but you know, this is really an advance topic and people have written 300-600 pages books on them, but i will try to answer any questions.
Calm down guys, each system does things a little differently and has their strength and weaknesses.
For now, enjoy your blue ray, play your new games, and free contents. The pS3 is still in its Launch phase. its not even one day old yet by European standard. Just sit back and relax.
I am glad each company is kind of have its own strenght and weaknesses, it will be fun to see what happens, for xbox it is obviously enjoying some unique games because it came out earlier and jacking some exclusives for now because game dev needs to make money somehow and stay in business and its online thing that it has going for itself.
For Sony it is obviously functionality and potential, packed in HDD, blue ray, the new Cell algorithm, linux, some returning system movers in the future (ffxiii, mgs, dmc, and so on). and of course, the higher price tag..Give it time.
and wii's different approach.
Let them duke it out!! This generation, i think you can pick up anyone of the three machines and you will NOT end up with a dead dreamcast, i gurantee!!! stop fighting over things on virtual space, peace out.
i am guessing around march 23, to co-incide with the European launch, but we may get it a bit earlier to leviate traffics so they dont have like 2 continents dL at the same time.Â
Sup sup guys, i just came back from a news site, there was a interview with Phil Harrison. He said the v1.6 firmware will include background download (i think he means u can dL and do other things at the same time). Also a unified friendlist is in the works as well.
So guys, looks like they are doing things we want them to with the firmware; anymore ideas for them to work on? (keep it realistic).
Well, they say the loading time is slower due to the slower BD rom compare to Xbox's DVD rom, i was thinking this problem could be solved by installing part of the game onto the HDD, but i guess the real bottleneck of the data processing lie not on the speed of the rom but the speed of the processing power. Since ps3 had more processing power to run all these data in parallel, i guess they figured out a way to do this effectively.
Good for them for trying to work it out instead of just porting it like ALL THE REST of the games we have seemed thus far, so far only this game and FNR3 have been re-coded to take advantage of the Cell right?? all the rest were just ports, which really angers me as a consumer sometimes.
If PS3 does not sell by March, that's when you guys should be worry. It's useless to argue about it right now, as you know its an expensive system and smart consumers are holding onto the money and waiting for Reviews to come out. Why argue now? argue at the end of March.
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