More than 30,000 PS3 owners sign up for Folding@home

The latest stats for the Folding@home project reveal that more than 30,000 PlayStation 3 owners have now signed up to take part in the project.

The project, which kicked off earlier this month, is being conducted by Stanford University and uses the power of the PS3's Cell chip to calculate data. By utilising the Cells of thousands of consoles world wide, researchers hope to find out more about the causes of diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis and cancer.

According to the latest statistics, nearly 40,000 PS3 CPUs are linked with the project - and more than 30,000 have been actively performing calculations in the last 50 days.

That figure stood at just under 15,000 on Friday, and has likely been boosted by new sales of PlayStation 3 following the console's European launch.

To sign up for Folding@home, which runs while PS3 consoles are idle, users must select the relevant icon in the Xross Media Bar.