The setup utilizes retired hardware to reduce computing's environmental impact
Yes, would love to turn all my old phones into tiny computers!
Today on the blog, we discuss a pathway for the second life of phones through the exploration of “phone cluster computing”, which can directly reduce the environmental footprint of computing by avoiding the need for further raw material extraction. More →https://goo.gle/4aJe5vO
Positive users praise Google's idea of clustering old phones for sustainable computing as a neat concept that lets progress win, while negative users call out logistics nightmares around batteries and cables.
The concept of obsolete compute no longer exists...
People replace their phones every ~4 yrs. This means there are hundreds of millions of old phones discarded each year that are still perfectly usable as computing devices. @Google in collabration with @UCSD is exploring how to turn these old phones into cloud-computing “phone clusters”. Putting phones back in service in this way can directly reduce the environmental footprint of computing by avoiding the need for further raw material extraction, and taking advantage of the embodied carbon already incurred from manufacturing these devices, and modern phones actually are already quite powerful computers. Read more in the blog below ⬇️
@tunguz The iBOINC
@tunguz the hard part is the power. ten thousand old phones means ten thousand swollen batteries and non-standard cables — thats a logistics nightmare, not a cluster
@erikbryn Obsolescence is a moving target; progress wins.
@tunguz neat idea
@tunguz Do you mind if I launch a small autoresearch nanochat on your iphone 11 then? Will not take too long.