Off course there will be religious hard liners will oppose any new approaches. ;)

I am wondering in the near future total smartphone terraflop power might exceed total desktop power or at least get closer something.

As long as they keep making desktops, There is no way in heck that a smart phone will ever be more powerfull.

I dont think that Seti@home will ever put smart phones in the closet to replace Oscar or Carolyn.

I am glad seti doesn't use smart phones instead of the servers. If outages happen now with servers think of the outages that will happen with smart phones as computers/servers. Desktops will always out preform smart phones in the near future. Magicjack plus has arm chip in it and it is not even a smart phone. They use those arm and tegra chips because of battery use and portability. A desktop does not need to be portable or conserve power because they generate money and it just depends on where the power comes from solar, wind, geothermal, waves, nuclear, coal, natural gas, oil it depends on the society and the power companies as to who will be green or not.

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the main problem with smart phones in general is they don'e have the math coprocessors that a PC has. You'll notice that the smart phone brags about having 1Ghz speed but it lacks the coprocessors that would heat that sucker like a pocket sized oven.

Raise your hand if you remember how big your HSF was on your 1Ghz PC. Now try and imagine that being compressed into a smartphone. It can't be done. The HSF is as big as the phone.

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

Yeah, never replace PC but almost definitely will be using along with PC too.
I have Tegra2 based tablet that lies at home most time on charger.
Pity it just sleeps. And it have dual-core CPU inside (perhaps this dual core CPU is faster than my old Athlon XP 2400 I still use as internet browsing PC and that still contribues to SETI). And GPU part is definitely faster...
Unfortunately, there is no sign of OpenCL support on Tegra2 platform...
They need to support it (or CUDA at least) to make GP-GPU really possible there...

I want to add another point from the ARM article:

"The 1,000 Tegra 3 chips have ARM CPUs and are being paired with discrete graphics processors from Nvidia to speed up scientific and math calculations. "

So, ARM by itself isn't quite ready for prime-time yet...and it benefits Nvidia, too.

and remember, "TANSTAAFL!" Eventually, it will cost you extra to crunch on your mobile device.


Lt

the main problem with smart phones in general <snip> would heat that sucker like a pocket sized oven.

That's the real issue I have with crunching on my smartphone. Never mind that its battery life is so poor I always keep it plugged in whenever I can. It gets hot in my hand just in regular use (especially with the hard plastic protective case keeping the heat in). I think it would simply fry if it spent all its spare time crunching Boinc projects. At the very least, the excess heat would hurt the battery and its life would drop even more.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

With people getting new phones every year, or every other year. There will be plenty of older phones that no ones wants to use as phones. So having 10 or 20 connected to USB cables for power and then dunked in a tank of mineral oil, to keep them cool, is perfectly feasible.

The real question is how much grunt do these ARM chips actually have. Is a dual core 1GHz chip worth the power it takes to run it?

My current phone is mono-core 600MHz guy. So when I get a new one later this year or next year I'll have it to mess around with.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

I wonder how you would water cool a telephone...... :D

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

I wonder how you would water cool a telephone...... :D

Steve

The cooling websites will soon be marketing a new line of watercooling baggies, with sealing grommets for cable entry. Then just drop 'er in your fish tank.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Hello!

Apparently I earlier posted a question here about using the mobile phone (PC-based variant) for use in Seti@home.

Definitely, if this was ever possible, the power supply would need to be connected all the time and the connection to the web should be available if not all the time, then the time it is needed for uploads and downloads.

In addition, the client software with its separate need for storage of files and data need to be present as well, often by means of an additional memory card or kit (perhaps with some 1 GB RAM capacity) which needs to be plugged in or inserted if not having done so already.

From what I was able to hear at that time, the processor is probably not up to the tasks when it comes to such devices. When it comes to Intel and its brand of processors, it ranges from 8 bit through 64 bit when it comes to the registers.

Also such processors operate at a certain speed, for instance my Intel Core i7-960 processor has a clock speed of 3.2 GHz internally. Also overclocking is available, but its disadvantage in my opinion is higher power consumption and less lasting time (longevity) for the available physical components inside.

It's certainly exciting comment - assessing the advantages & dis. Part of the problem could be solved by only using 1 core. It could also snooze when on batteries, or reduce ot 1 core then. There is tremendous capability here, regardless of the initial disadvantages. Some would get hotter/warmer than others - including a heat-sensor as well would serve to reduce performance when/if necessary. It's worth pursuing & testing in the real world to see how the real-life decision-making logic of users would progress.

Isn't the following true as well:

Ideas and products, both good ones as well as bad ones still often come in separate 'niches' and therefore may need to be ported in order to be of more general use.

Some earlier applications, typically DOS-based applications like database software (I once used such one with the name of Enable) came without any possiblilties for upgrading or connecting by means of the web. They were standalone products which had to be uninstalled and then re-installed (possibly with newer versions of the same applications or maybe something else).

Microsoft Windows, however, having been upgraded from Windows 3.0 (and its much better 3.1) through the currently popular Windows XP (some flaws in here, though) and its recent Windows Ultimate products (both 32 bits and 64 bits, slowly replacing Windows XP) apparently were meant to be integrated towards the web by means of its included software already from its early inception (by means of 'add-ons' or 'plug-ins', coming in separate modules).

But I only have Microsoft Frontpage Express. Where did Microsoft Frontpage go?

Yeah, never replace PC but almost definitely will be using along with PC too.
I have Tegra2 based tablet that lies at home most time on charger.
Pity it just sleeps. And it have dual-core CPU inside (perhaps this dual core CPU is faster than my old Athlon XP 2400 I still use as internet browsing PC and that still contribues to SETI). And GPU part is definitely faster...
Unfortunately, there is no sign of OpenCL support on Tegra2 platform...
They need to support it (or CUDA at least) to make GP-GPU really possible there...

Maybe Bruce Wayne Tegra, a.k.a. Tegra 4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Tegra#Tegra_.28Wayne.29_series

the main problem with smart phones in general is they don'e have the math coprocessors that a PC has. You'll notice that the smart phone brags about having 1Ghz speed but it lacks the coprocessors that would heat that sucker like a pocket sized oven.

Raise your hand if you remember how big your HSF was on your 1Ghz PC. Now try and imagine that being compressed into a smartphone. It can't be done. The HSF is as big as the phone.

You're forgetting about process and design improvements: feature size (32 nm on Sandy Bridge Core iX CPUs vs 180 nm on the Coppermine 1 GHz Pentium III), lower voltage from the smaller feature size, lower leakage current when shut off, gating of unused sections, dynamic frequency selection based on thermal envelope...

I'm reasonably sure that a 1.3 GHz Core i3-2357M ULV laptop CPU can significantly outperform that Coppermine Pentium III... while dissipating only 17 watts vs Coppermine's 40+ watts.

EDIT: I found some more information about the relative performance of the i3-2357M. With two 1.3 GHz cores, it scores 1659 on PassMark. A 1.27 GHz PIII scores 309 - divide the i3's score and TDP half to go to one core, and we have the result of about 13x more PassMarks per watt since the Pentium III was top of the line (and we all had CPUs about that speed in our PCs.)

If you dial back the processing power a bit you end up with parts like AMD's new tablet APU with a 4.5 watt TDP that I'm sure are still competitive with that 1 GHz PIII.

It very certainly CAN be done.

However, you are right in that the design of the current CPUs living in most people's cell phones, despite being 1 GHz or whatever, aren't comparable (in terms of MFLOPS or benchmarks with distributed computing type stuff) to desktop CPUs with the same clock speed (new or old). They are missing all sorts of stuff, like huge memory bandwidth, and they have a totally different design philosophy because they're intended for different tasks.

Because of this I think running Seti@Home on my 1 GHz Samsung Galaxy S would be a terrible idea - not very efficient, and it would probably very quickly exceed the device's thermal capabilities. I know the phone gets incredibly hot when a program gets stuck in a loop without force closing. This heat is terrible for the battery and probably everything else in the phone.

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the main problem with smart phones in general is they don'e have the math coprocessors that a PC has. You'll notice that the smart phone brags about having 1Ghz speed but it lacks the coprocessors that would heat that sucker like a pocket sized oven.

Raise your hand if you remember how big your HSF was on your 1Ghz PC. Now try and imagine that being compressed into a smartphone. It can't be done. The HSF is as big as the phone.

You're forgetting about process and design improvements: feature size (32 nm on Sandy Bridge Core iX CPUs vs 180 nm on the Coppermine 1 GHz Pentium III), lower voltage from the smaller feature size, lower leakage current when shut off, gating of unused sections, dynamic frequency selection based on thermal envelope...

I'm reasonably sure that a 1.3 GHz Core i3-2357M ULV laptop CPU can significantly outperform that Coppermine Pentium III... while dissipating only 17 watts vs Coppermine's 40+ watts.

EDIT: I found some more information about the relative performance of the i3-2357M. With two 1.3 GHz cores, it scores 1659 on PassMark. A 1.27 GHz PIII scores 309 - divide the i3's score and TDP half to go to one core, and we have the result of about 13x more PassMarks per watt since the Pentium III was top of the line (and we all had CPUs about that speed in our PCs.)

If you dial back the processing power a bit you end up with parts like AMD's new tablet APU with a 4.5 watt TDP that I'm sure are still competitive with that 1 GHz PIII.

It very certainly CAN be done.

However, you are right in that the design of the current CPUs living in most people's cell phones, despite being 1 GHz or whatever, aren't comparable (in terms of MFLOPS or benchmarks with distributed computing type stuff) to desktop CPUs with the same clock speed (new or old). They are missing all sorts of stuff, like huge memory bandwidth, and they have a totally different design philosophy because they're intended for different tasks.

Because of this I think running Seti@Home on my 1 GHz Samsung Galaxy S would be a terrible idea - not very efficient, and it would probably very quickly exceed the device's thermal capabilities. I know the phone gets incredibly hot when a program gets stuck in a loop without force closing. This heat is terrible for the battery and probably everything else in the phone.

And if Yer lucky the Lithium battery won't explode.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Yeah the fact is desktop is dying laptops are following now tablets and smartphones are rising both in volumes and computing powers. If Boinc developers won't harvest this power source then it will be a joke but those 3 guys from israel are real pioneers who transformed the first android boinc. This is the best current computing strategic figure:

+

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Mandtugai!

Let's not forget Nvidia claims Tegra 3 to have roughly mobile Core 2 Duo performance. Not i7 performance but definitely significant.

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Let's not forget Nvidia claims Tegra 3 to have roughly mobile Core 2 Duo performance. Not i7 performance but definitely significant.

[img ]http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/664/benchnvidia.png[/img]

It just so happens I have a T7200 Core 2 Duo in my MODT box. It is good for around 2,000 RAC on average.

I see tablets probably being the first devices to really get BOINC going. Since the OS's, and hardware, are often the same between the phones and tablets it shouldn't be any trouble to to get it going on a phone.

With Android and iOS just being *nix derivatives I am guessing it is just a matter of getting a compiler for the ARM hardware.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

In the end Seti@home still gets most from its power users, those having either powerful single PC's or maybe many PC's connected or interlinked via a local network which then connects to the web.

Also, do not forget minicomputers and supercomputers and the capabilities such computing systems have when it comes to the field of numerical processing.

A desktop computer is typically limited to one central processor on its motherboard, possibly with CUDA-support by means of either one or maybe two CUDA-capable monitor cards (by means of a graphical software driver).

One instance of BOINC Manager is supposed to keep track of the tasks in progress as well as other tasks that may lie waiting to be subsequently run.

If all tasks should be run at the same time, either you need more than one single processor and following that, more than one motherboard (or possibly some kind of motherboard supporting more than one main processor at the same time).

A minicomputer or supercomputer quite soon, or maybe too soon becomes a server. It speciality is the handling of several computer-intensive tasks simultaneously. It therefore needs lot of memory (RAM), several or many hard discs and hard disc drives (possibly RAID'ed - I guess SCSI is no more) and also many network interface cards (NIC's).

Also, you do not typically run Microsoft Windows and maybe not even an operating system supporting a graphical interface at all on many such mainframe systems. It reminds me of an older computer language with the name of Fortran.

Unix, on the other hand appears to be coming with a graphical client supporting its operating system.

Possibly, computer manufacturers like IBM, Cray, Sun Microsystems and others as well may have bee able to develop things a little further in recent years (do not forget Java and other similar software products). Systems integration is an important field today.

According to this statement the upcoming Stark cpu by nvidia will be 20x of Tegra2 or core2duo-7200 which means in 2-3 years smartphones will be serious competition to laptops in muscle counts.

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Mandtugai!

In addition to the heat problem, BOINC is distributed under one of the LGPL - which is completely incompatible with the licensing model of the Apple App Store. This puts iOS off limits - unless the end user has jail broken the phone. In addition to that, BOINC downloads executables automatically from third parties - also incompatible with the Apple App store.

So the problems with using smart phones are:
1) Heat buildup.
2) Tethering to a power cord for crunching.
3) (Possible) shortened battery lifetime.
4) Slower processing units.
5) Licensing for some device types.

It is probably possible to deal with at least some of the problems, and live with most of the rest.

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BOINC WIKI