All the way back in August of last year, Stanford University announced that it had partnered up with Sony to port its Folding@Home distributed computing software to the PlayStation 3 console. Joystiq now reports that a Folding@Home client for the PlayStation 3 will finally come out next week, on March 23.

According to details from the Folding@home web site, PS3 is able "to achieve performance previously only possible on supercomputers," with each computer likely "able to attain performance on the 100 gigaflop scale." With about 10,000 such machines, or about 1 percent of all PlayStation 3 consoles in the U.S., performance on the petaflop scale would be added to Folding@home. The PS3 version of the Folding@home software will also feature an upgraded, flashier interface. The Cell processor will be consumed with simulations, but the NVIDIA RSX GPU will be free to provide a visual representation of the actual folding process in real-time with graphical effects such as HDR and ISO surface rendering. Users will also be granted a small bit of interactivity by using the SIXAXIS controller to navigate the 3D space of the molecule to look at the protein from different angles in real-time. For a video of a prototype of the GUI for the PS3 client, check out Folding@home's PS3 FAQ.

So what's the point of folding on a console? Well, an article by the San Jose Mercury News states that if 10,000 PS3 user-just 1% of those who own the console in North America-run the software, it will double the amount of computing power the project currently receives worldwide.Of course, PS3 owners won't be able to play games at the same time they run the folding simulations. They'll have to stop the simulation when they want to switch to a game or other PS3 activity, such as using the machine's broadband network to download a movie trailer from the PlayStation store. But they will be able to set their machines to automatically resume the simulations if the PS3 is turned on and not being used for anything else.