Many of you are most likely already familiar with Stanford University’s Folding@home project. The project involved ordinary people downloading software onto their PCs, which would then utilise CPU processing cycles when their computers were idle to help find cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s and other types of diseases including Ebola.
The study of protein folding involves millions of complicated calculations. The combined effect of many people contributing hundreds of computational hours of processing power towards the project, gives the team at Stanford significantly more resource than it could achieve on its own. Folding@Home was also available for the PlayStation 3 for five years, before it was pulled in 2012.
Well now Sony Xperia owners can also join in to help make a difference. Sony Mobile has launched a BETA of the Folding@Home app that will allow you to lend your smartphone processing power whilst you sleep. Sony says that 500k users running the app would more than double the power of entire the Folding@Home network today. Pretty powerful stuff.
Sony says that there is no security risk involved with Folding@Home on your phone. Only the processing power and Wi-Fi connection are utilised. The app does not access any data from the phone. To help contribute your phone will need to be connected to a charger and a Wi-Fi network and be on within the time interval set in the app.
The app will work on select Sony Xperia devices running Android 4.4 (KitKat) and higher. This includes all Xperia Z series smartphones as well as the Xperia T3, T2 Ultra, M2 Aqua and C3. The app will support non-Sony devices in early 2015. To get started, hit the Play Store link below.
Google Play Store: Folding@Home
Via Sony Mobile Blog.
Thanks Hasan!
