Cell Phones For Science: BOINC Now Available For Android

Luyseyal writes "BOINC is now available on Android. Many of you may not know, but the Slashdot Users team makes a decent showing on World Community Grid. WCG supports research on AIDS, schistoma, cancer, clean energy, and more. Now is your chance to put your idle charge cycles to good use. Let's do some science!"

Comments

Battery

[Anonymous Coward]

Like I'm not already fighting to keep my battery last a day? :(

Re:Battery

[Saethan]

From the app description: 'BOINC computes only when your device is plugged in and charged, so it won't run down your battery'

Re:Battery

[MickyTheIdiot]

out of the box configuration is to not do calculations on battery... but I know we have 20k more battery comments coming.

Also, it is also set up out of the box so that if the battery gets below 90% it doesn't do calculations at any time. This allow the battery to charge up properly on most devices. Having said that, there are a lot of devices (like the Nexus 7 with four cores) that have problems because the battery drains *EVEN IF* it is on the battery. I have to set mine so that it only uses 2 cores otherwise the thing never charges.

Re:Battery

[MickyTheIdiot]

aw.. crap... ...redo

  Having said that, there are a lot of devices (like the Nexus 7 with four cores) that have problems because the battery drains *EVEN IF* it is on the charger. I have to set mine so that it only uses 2 cores otherwise the thing never charges.

Re:Battery

[mwvdlee]

It will burn a hole in your table though.
Ever noticed how hot smartphones get when left running at full capacity for a while?

Re:Battery

[Anonymous Coward]

My phone overheats using Boinc as well. Given that lithium-ion performance is directly tied to the max temperature ever reached by the battery, this does concern me. Well, it would, except work paid for the phone and I have a feeling that if the battery goes out that they'll just pitch me a new phone rather than a new battery. Convenient!

Re:Battery

[RicktheBrick]

I would estimate that the average user would be able to do one result a day. That would require about 8 hours of charging time since a lot of the fa@h work units require over 8 hours of computing time. IBM has already contributed over 49 million results and over 119 thousand yesterday alone. There are 6 members that have contributed around 10 million or more results so there is some series money involved here. There are over 900,000 results yesterday so even if WCG managed to get 100,000 new android users, that would mean maybe a 10% jump in results. Now lets compare that to the recent use of GPU power. The help conquer cancer project did manage to use the GPU and it was getting around a million results a day or more than what WCG is getting today. So a project that involve the GPU would contribute far more without adding a singe volunteer. I have read that WCG's member have the computing power comparable to around a petaflop. But the largest supercomputers now is 30 times that. To me that is telling me that this project is not worth the money it would take to get 5% of the time of the United States fastest supercomputer. I would think that a cure to aids would mean well into the billions of dollars in savings. So is the prospect of finding a cure so low that a number of countries would not contribute enough money for a super computer? They spent over 100 billion on the ISS and are spending a lot of money on the cern collider. The largest supercomputer probably is at least 100 times more energy efficient than the average home computer. This is a project that would cost a significant less total money on a super computer than the total amount being spent by the volunteers. It just requires the faith from a couple of governments. Incidentally since the article bragged about the contribution of the slashdot users, I will brag about me being the number one contributer of the slashdot users or at least I was a little while ago.

NativeBOINC

[SecretSquirrel33]

I have been using the Android port NativeBOINC for quite a while now. Just recently they even added support to my favorite program, Einstein@Home.

The Idle Cycles Fallacy

[GameboyRMH]

This point gives me a chance to bring up the fallacy of "idle cycles" on modern processors.

There's no such thing any more. There was in the '90s and earlier when CPUs didn't have the power controls they do today, but nowadays your CPU uses exactly what it needs and anything more you give it to do will use extra energy.

So be aware that you're not putting any wasted resource to good use with these things. You're just using more resources. And on a phone that's the last thing you need.

Re:The Idle Cycles Fallacy

[Luyseyal]

Indeed, idle cycles nowadays simply refers to your phone doing all of jack and shit while it's plugged in and recharging all night... apart from checking your email, SMS's, waiting for that phone call, etc.

It does NOT refer to wasted energy cycles as it did in the past. Yes, it absolutely uses more power than it would if you were just charging (or better, you turned it off completely and charged it then).

It is an act of donating a few bucks a year to scientific research.
-l