Stanford University's Folding@home distributed computing project has seen its capacity double in the last month to 700 T Flops thanks largely to the PlayStation 3 according to Sony.

The 250,000 folding PS3's now account for 400 T Flops of capacity in the effort to model and understand how proteins "fold" in the quest to solve the mysteries of such diseases as Alzheimers and BSE.

The mass of publicity surrounding the PS3 joining the Folding@home network has also seen PC folding jump 20% in the past month, and on Wednesday Sony released an update which it says will increase PS3 calcalation speeds for folding.