Possibility of distributed computing using mobile devices?

[Hulk]

I was thinking that as mobile devices start to become more powerful, and more importantly because there are literally billions of them out there, they could make a very powerful distributed computing network right?

I mean one ant can't do much, but 100 million is pretty scary.

 

[GLeeM]

Mobile devices may be getting more powerful, but they are not made to be using all that power full time. They will overheat and/or drain the battery fast. They are designed for short bursts of full power.

A desktop computer is designed for 24/7 full load use, (or it should be).

There are some BOINC projects that have Android apps.

 

[Turbonium]

I'm no expert, but battery life would be a huge issue. You'd have to leave it plugged in, and who wants to do that with their phone? Unless you do it overnight, in which case your phone would just charge more slowly. Also, the added heat would degrade your battery faster over time. Mobile devices aren't the greatest at dissipating heat.

And they're also honestly not that powerful. Millions of them sure, but individually not at all, especially with limited memory at their disposal. Mobile devices are just highly optimized and running very finely tuned software. All this talk of quad core phones and such is misleading.

I mean, from a raw power perspective, an average dual core desktop system from a few years back is leagues above the fastest multi-core offering on a phone. And this same dual core system is pushing it in terms of being "worth it" to run DC projects with, let alone a phone.

 

[Assimilator1]

C2Ds are definitely still worth crunching on if that's all you've got .

Theirs a list of 6 DC projects that support Android here, but I agree with the others on heat & battery life issues.

 

[Ken g6]

I've been doing BOINC on Android a lot lately. Heat can be somewhat of an issue, but less so on tablets for instance. And I have a low-end phone that just can't get very hot. Battery life isn't an issue if you leave the defaults set, so the device does not crunch while on battery, or while the battery is below 90%. BOINC also suspends itself if the battery gets too hot - though I don't know about the CPU.

PrimeGrid also supports BOINC with one app, though it's not listed above. I'll let you know when that race comes up.

 

[Hulk]

Great points.

The battery issue is a big one. But one work around would be to set it up so that the computing would only take place when connected to the charger AFTER the battery is fully charged.

As for the limited amount of compute available, I think we can all agree that every iteration of these devices will bring more compute. In addition, every one of them is generally connected to the internet 24/7.

 

[Ken g6]

The battery issue is a big one. But one work around would be to set it up so that the computing would only take place when connected to the charger AFTER the battery is fully charged.

I keep forgetting that this is basically how BOINC works: It won't start computing until the battery is up to the minimum specified level (90% by default). This always surprises me when I hook up my device and it doesn't start computing right away.

 

[ZipSpeed]

How about a whole bunch of these?

http://ark.intel.com/products/78868/Intel-Pentium-Processor-J2900-2M-Cache-up-to-2_67-GHz

10 watts and 8 threads. Won't win any performance awards individually but a room full of these?

 

[Ken g6]

That says only 4 threads. And it's Atom, so I wouldn't expect great performance. But I don't see any examples at wuprop so I'm not sure.

 

[ZipSpeed]

Ugh, I need to learn to read. I was thinking of the C2750 specs but J2900 was what popped up in my head. 20 watts though and not cheap either.

http://ark.intel.com/products/77987

It would be neat to see the C2750 move to the prosumer space.

 

[Fardringle]

There are a few projects that will run on mobile devices. We've had some discussion (and I did some testing) a while back and mostly decided it's not worth the effort or the issues caused by running a phone/tablet at 100% heat for long periods of time.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2332417&highlight=android