Got a Nokia N73 mobile phone in the door the other day. Comes with a 1 GB memory card and a connector to my PC (USB towards the PC).

Could I run Seti@home on the Nokia N73?

this was discussed frequently when the Iphone came out. The problem with the phone processing is the lack of a decent processor in the phone and the amount of electricity the phone would need to use to complete a task. Most likely your phone would need to be plugged in constantly even to start a WU. This kinda defeats the purpose of having a Mobile phone. then we get back to the Processor. These tend to be very weak on a mobile phone. I just read some folks run their old 233Mhz processor still. This takes about 300 hours of constant crunching to complete which equals 12.5 days. I assume you want to use your phone more than ever 12 days or so. This is assuming your phone processor even works as fast as a 233Mhz CPU

lets not forget that you'd actually somehow figure out how to get BOINC working on your phone

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

lets not forget that you'd actually somehow figure out how to get BOINC working on your phone

Someone already did that, but the project seems to have died someplace last year: BOINCOID

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I looked up the Nokia N73 and it appears to have a Texas Instruments 220Mhz CPU onboard. I think this is where the guys at BOINCOID ran into problems. BOINC isnt able to recognize the chip and probably won't run WU's. COnsidering the vast number of chip manufacturers this may be a huge problem getting a Cellphone to run BOINC

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Yo,

As Boincoid's Co-Parent I must object! Boincoid isn't all dead, it's just mostly dead ;-)

It is lacking some 100 hours of programming IMHO to be complete. We just had to drop everything back then, and since life has been consuming.

Regarding your concerns with the mobile phone - we had to tackle many such questions back then so we have some answers. Regarding the battery, our obvious approach is running the app only when the phone's connected to a charger. This could easily be done automatically by the client. So when's you're sound asleep, your phone works for science!

Regarding the CPU - I've been programming some DSP on the iPhone recently, and am quite impressed with the results I get. Obivously models coming out soon will be even more powerful. And as BOINC's director - David Anderson - said in a convention about 2 years ago - When BOINC started it was running on 286 machines, so we should be grateful for the CPU's that arrive in mobile devices these days.

Also, something half CPU half power consumption - I was told this also in the convention, that mobile devices are aimed at low power consumptions, so the Flop-to-Watt ratio (or whatever it's called) might actually be even better on the devices. I have no knowledge in the field, so can't vouch for this myself.

I'll end with a hopeful note, that I think the project was a bit ahead of its time back then. Now with the devices coming out so powerful, and the capabilities they display, it feels as more people are starting to pay attention to it. I say this from Google searches and queries regarding the project that arrive to us. Hopefully it will see life yet!

Cheers,
Oded.

the current problem is that even the newest smart phone barely has a 200Mhz CPU which politely speaking is horribly slow for most if not all BOINC projects. SO porting something to an Iphone is great as long as you don't mind waiting a few weeks while it sits on the charger and slowly crunches away at a WU. I think Smart phones are coming to a time that if they choose to make them faster either have to make the apps "cleaner" or start putting fans inside their phones

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

I am really cofused how you can say that (max 200Mhz)?!?! Have you been watching the cell phone market recently? Look at the new Droid from Verizon:

1Ghz Snapdragon Processor

It is only going up, and fast, from here!

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Join that.

iPhone 3Gs - 667 Mhz
iPhone 4 - 1 Ghz

and I think some HTC or rather model is shipping with a dual core these days...

Time for mobility is here!

Join that.

iPhone 3Gs - 667 Mhz
iPhone 4 - 1 Ghz

and I think some HTC or rather model is shipping with a dual core these days...

Time for mobility is here!

Does it have a floating point unit? Does it have a programmable graphics card?

My bet for both is no. Without an FPU, you can expect projects that are heavy users of floating point to run about 1000 times as long. No programmable graphics card would eliminate that way of doing floating point.

How about battery life considerations? The batteries have a limited number of charge cycles. Also in order to extend battery life, the processor goes to sleep when not in use. If kept on, the battery will drain in about the "talk" time listed, not the idle time listed. This limits them to being used for BOINC only when plugged into the wall (which for me is for about an hour every 3 days or so - YMMV).

Phone processors are very limited in what they can do, and many projects would not be able to use them even if there was a BOINC port that would run on them.

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BOINC WIKI

A quick search on iPhone's 4 spec:
(taken from wiki)
"Apple A4 is based on the ARM processor architecture.[5] The first version released runs at 1 GHz and contains a Cortex-A8 CPU core paired with a PowerVR SGX 535 graphics processor (GPU)[3][6][7][8] built on Samsung's 45 nm process"

But even that's beside the point. You're right about most phones. And you're right about the CPU usage. And the battery life time. And you're right about everything else too.

BUT - that's today. Think in a year. Think in 3. Think about the device's numbers. And think about the conceptual change BOINC could undergo - it could become part of the young bubbling social world, and this is a major delta in exposure.

I'm just saying it was started more as a vision, and already, 2 years later, the dream is coming into reality. I don't think it will be ahead of its time and die out...

But of course, I'm a bit biased ;-)

Oded.

that phone would need extra cooling. heck even laptops overheat just running the standard app from seti. Then they still need to make a better battery. unless you still want to have that thing plugged in constantly

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Oded, if you're still passing through here at times, could you please look at this thread in the BOINC forums and perhaps leave comments? With thanks.

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