Amazing little blackthrows too. Or so I've heard.
You can usually find a rootable phone in Walmart for about $15.
Decommissioned mobile devices as cheap energy-efficient compute nodes
21–30 of 73 posts
Re: Decommissioned mobile devices as cheap energy-efficient compute nodes
#22This was a establishing plot point in Rudy Rucker's short story Hormiga Canyon, published in Asimov's August 2007 issue. He also included the benefit of voice recognition on any node :) You can read it here: http://www.rudyrucker.com/transrealbooks/completestories/#_T... (warning: Rudy's stories are... zany)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hacker_and_the_Ants
Is a good one too.
Re: Decommissioned mobile devices as cheap energy-efficient compute nodes
#23Isn't this the storyline to HBO's Silicon Valley ? Someone took it seriously?
Now we just need some phones to blow up while people are using them.
Re: Decommissioned mobile devices as cheap energy-efficient compute nodes
#24Would love to see a community like Rasberry Pi for linux on old phones! Maybe that already exists?
Re: Decommissioned mobile devices as cheap energy-efficient compute nodes
#25How does "FLOP per Joule" compare between such devices and an average desktop PC?
Re: Decommissioned mobile devices as cheap energy-efficient compute nodes
#26In practice so far new CPUs were much more power efficient than older ones - so much that this approach makes little sense but .... it is worth noting that one of the reasons this might remotely work is on slide 7: Diminishing growth CPU performance / end of Moore's Law. I'm fairly optimistic about the 10nm node still providing a power saving boost but in the long run this sort of thinking could interesting.
Re: Decommissioned mobile devices as cheap energy-efficient compute nodes
#27Well, the cost of a raspberry Pi for a home server is actually quite high when compared to using the busted or obsolete phone gathering dust in your drawer. Since there are probably millions of these, why not recycle into cheap servers given the benefits of their low power use (and the possible ability to draw power to charge during cheap periods and run off battery during expensive ones).
For an individual, RPi is cheaper if your time is worth anything at all.
On the other hand, if enough devices of the same type become available for this purpose it might make sense for a business to do this at scale.
Re: Decommissioned mobile devices as cheap energy-efficient compute nodes
#28Skimming through the article, I think it does not include cost of labor. In a developed country, my guess is that the cost to have a human worker collect, clean, setup, connect, etc. all the 84 phones would be actually higher than buying a new server.
In third world countries, this could be a different story. I would be happy to send my old phones to Africa to be used at schools.
Re: Decommissioned mobile devices as cheap energy-efficient compute nodes
#29Skimming through the article, I think it does not include cost of labor. In a developed country, my guess is that the cost to have a human worker collect, clean, setup, connect, etc. all the 84 phones would be actually higher than buying a new server. In third world countries, this could be a different story. I would be happy to send my old phones to Africa to be used at schools.
It would more likely end up in a place like this, though.
Re: Decommissioned mobile devices as cheap energy-efficient compute nodes
#30Amazing little blackthrows too. Or so I've heard. You can usually find a rootable phone in Walmart for about $15.
But why buy it over a comparatively cheap single board computer?