Well at least this promise has/is being fulfilled

This has been taken from Game Revolution

By Eugene Huang

It's only been a little more than two days since the software was introduced, but the PS3's entry into Folding@Home has already moved Stanford's distributed computing project forward by leaps and bounds. As of approximately 4:00 PM EST, the latest statistics on the project have shown that PS3 users are contributing 367 Tera (trillion) FLoating point Operations Per Second (TFLOPS), which is currently more than twice the amount of all of the other operating systems participating in the project combined. And that number is growing rapidly, as Kotaku originally reported that PS3 users had contributed only 251 TFLOPS as of 8:00 AM EST this morning.

A FLOPS is a unit that measures the number of calculations a computer can execute at one time, which is thereby a means of judging a computer's performance. According to the statistics page, there are currently 159198 Windows PCs that are actively participating in the project, and those combined processors have reached a total of 151 TFLOPS. By comparison, the number of active PS3 machines totals only 14971, but the combined power of PS3 consoles is already contributing more than half of the 616 total TFLOPS that are currently being devoted to the project. Both Stanford and Sony are expecting the PS3 to push the project into the PFLOPS scale, with one PFLOPS equaling that of 1000 TFLOPS, or 1 quadrillion FLOPS.

The PS3's success in the program has also sparked a recent string of activism, with gaming blog PS3 Fanboy organizing a "fold-a-thon", requesting that all PS3 users leave their units on overnight with the Folding@Home program running this coming Sunday.

Folding@Home is a project initiated by Stanford University in an effort to study the folding and misfolding of proteins, and will be used towards the research and curing of numerous diseases, including Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, Huntington's Disease, and numerous forms of cancer. PS3 owners who have already updated their machines to system software version 1.6 can participate, as long as they have downloaded the Folding@Home software, available under the "Network" bar of the PlayStation browser.

GamePro will be providing you with much more information regarding the Folding@Home project in the very near future, so stay tuned.

wow, PFLOPS!? for us computer people, that's a 50ft monster on steroids.

Could just imagine the slogan

"Buy the PS3 to stop you grandmother from dying"

Funny if its not really happening to you