One Million PLAYSTATION®3 Users Participate in Folding@home Research Project

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) today announced that since PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3®) took part in Stanford University's Folding@home™ project on March 22, 2007, the total number of registered users has reached over one million users. This equates to roughly 3,000 PS3 users registering for Folding@home per day or 2 new registered users every minute worldwide.

"Since partnering with SCEI, we have seen our research capabilities increase by leaps and bounds through the continued participation of Folding@home users," said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead. "Now we have over one million PS3 users registered for Folding@home, allowing us to address questions previously considered impossible to tackle computationally, with the goal of finding cures to some of the world's most life-threatening diseases. We are grateful for the extraordinary worldwide participation by PS3 and PC users around the globe."

Folding@home aims to understand protein folding and misfolding, and how these are related to diseases and many forms of cancer. When proteins do not fold correctly, there can be serious consequences, including many well-known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

Prior to the inclusion of PS3 in March 2007, the Folding@home project leveraged the distributed computing power of personal computers from around the world. Now a network of roughly 10,000 PS3s can accomplish the same amount of work as a network of 100,000 PCs, and have the ability to perform research simulations in weeks rather than years. In fact, it took just six months after PS3 joining Folding@home for the project to surpass a petaflops (*1), a computing milestone that had never been reached before by a distributed computing network. On September 16, 2007, Folding@home was recognized by Guinness World Records™ as the world's most powerful distributed computing network.

Currently PS3 users make up approximately 74 percent of the total teraflop computing power of the Folding@home project. For more information, please see official website: http://www.scei.co.jp/folding/en/.

(*1) A petaflops is the ability of a computer to do one quadrillion floating point operations per second (FLOPS).

About Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

Recognized as the global leader and company responsible for the progression of consumer-based computer entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) manufacturers, distributes and markets the PlayStation® game console, the PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system, the PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) handheld entertainment system and the PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3®) system. PlayStation has revolutionized home entertainment by introducing advanced 3D graphic processing, and PlayStation 2 further enhances the PlayStation legacy as the core of home networked entertainment. PSP is a new handheld entertainment system that allows users to enjoy 3D games, with high-quality full-motion video, and high-fidelity stereo audio. PS3 is an advanced computer system, incorporating the state-of-the-art Cell processor with super computer like power. SCEI, along with its subsidiary divisions Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc., Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd., and Sony Computer Entertainment Korea Inc. develops, publishes, markets and distributes software, and manages the third party licensing programs for these platforms in the respective markets worldwide. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. is an independent business unit of the Sony Group.

PlayStation, PLAYSTATION, PS3 and PSP are registered trademarks and Cell Broadband Engine is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact:

SOURCE: Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

CONTACT: Abigail Murphy of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.,
+1-650-655-5510, abigail_murphy@playstation.sony.com

Web site: http://www.playstation.com/
http://www.scei.co.jp/folding/en