Is it possible to run Seti on a Pocket PC (64 Mb Ram and 300 Mhz)? Or is it to slow to implement such thing?

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> Is it possible to run Seti on a Pocket PC (64 Mb Ram and 300 Mhz)? Or is it to
> slow to implement such thing?
>
it's primary a question of the availability of a BOINC Client, compiled and optimized for Pocket PCs CPUs (ARM or other)

The execution will be slower than on a 300 MHz legacy PC, due the Pocket PCs
are optimized to use the resources in as most less energy consuming way.

Not optimized for speed.

An prime calculation apps, I wrote with the Microsoft embedded compilers,
is not to slow, but cant be compared. But much quicker as the Palm it is.

Other apps making IO, thats slowes down the PPC completely, even with good code, read and write operation as extremly slow.

And you will not have the full 64 MB as RAM configured, pehaps the half
(internal and external storage)

Depending you Pocket PC,
you can overclock and underclock it, *my* old IPAQ with 200 MHz can run at 183 MHz (giving more battery life time) or can run til 227 MHz, (faster)

for the IPAQ, the tool is called IPAQCLK.EXE


If really you cant find sleep without running boinc on the PPC,
this could be done:
Make a remote connection from your PocketPC to a recent m$ OS based client. This one is crunching.
Then you get the remote desktop from the big PC to the PocketPC and now you have the illusion, the PPC is cruching and this fast....;-)

There are Tools around, offering this possibility.

If Bochs can be set to emulate a PocketPC, you may want to do a test run - If there's any hardware issue, you'll know about it. (This is how I found out that a IIcx running A/UX 3 can't be put to use...)

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> If Bochs can be set to emulate a PocketPC, you may want to do a test run - If
> there's any hardware issue, you'll know about it. (This is how I found out
> that a IIcx running A/UX 3 can't be put to use...)
>

You know what they call a PPC running BOINC? A coffee warmer.

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>>If Bochs can be set to emulate a PocketPC, you may want to do a test run - If there's any hardware issue, you'll know about it. (This is how I found out that a IIcx running A/UX 3 can't be put to use...)
>You know what they call a PPC running BOINC? A coffee warmer.
Know what we call a user without a computer?

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> Know what we call a user <a> href="http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/hosts_user.php?userid=7822858">without a computer[/url]?
>

Wouldn't that be an abacus? [ducking]

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Hmm... I could have sworn I replied to this post already. Oh well.

Another major problem here is that (last time I looked) the ARM processors did not have a Floating point unit which is where seti@home spends most of its time. It could be emulated but this would further decrease performance - by a lot. How much time does a desktop CPU running at 300 MHz take? I think 30 to 40 hours. So a PPC at the same speed would probably take 4 or 5 DAYS at least. Add to that that you wouldn't want it running unless it is plugged in (not very often for some handhelds) and most PPCs probably wouldn't finish a single work unit within the 2 week window. I would call that not enough computing power to make it worth the effort of porting... but that is just me.

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Another difficulty is with battery power. Handheld devices are designed so that unless the user is paying attention to the device (key pad, stylus, etc.) the device cuts the CPU frequency by alot. So you only really crunch at full speed while you are doing work. Not exactly what was wanted.

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BOINC WIKI

FWIW: ConnectixCPU at ~534MHz running W2KSP3 took 16 hours to complete one WU, and that was running on top of a TiBook3,5 867MHz X.3.7 I'd expect a PocketPC to fair much worse...

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