It’s no secret the PS3 packs a real punch when it comes to computing power. Add in some of Stanford’s Folding@home project, 600,000 registered consoles, and some good ol’ scientific elbow grease and you have a legitimate entry in the Guinness Book of World Records.

The PS3, according to a Sony press release , played a very important role in helping Folding@home surpass its previous world record set on September 16, 2007 when the project surpassed 1 petaflop. Later that month, on the 23rd, the collective efforts of only the PS3s reached the one petaflop status without the help of the rest of the Folding@home community.

The Folding@home project distributes computing tasks to several computers around the world to aid in the research of several different diseases. Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University, Vijay Pande, is thankful for the work of the PS3:

“Without them we would not be able to make the advancements we have made in our studies of several different diseases. But it is clear that none of this would be even remotely possible without the power of PS3, it has increased our research capabilities by leaps and bounds.”

While the PS3 lags in sales compared to the Xbox 360 and the Wii, competing consoles can’t lay claim to a world record and certainly can’t tout that they’re helping the research efforts of disease fighting scientists.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 1:46 am under PS3, PlayStation 3.

Read more entries by John Pospisil.