March 29, 2013 at 23:22BOINC Distributed Computing Now Available for Android Devices
What is distributed computing, I think everyone knows on Habré. If not, then here is a great article where everything is told in the most detailed way, including the history and description of various projects / platforms. Among others, the BOINC platform (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) is also mentioned. A little copy-paste: "BOINC is a ready-made binding (typical server components + client) for network computing projects, which greatly facilitates their launch, although it does not completely eliminate mental work, since a number of server modules need to be prepared for a specific task." So, if until now the calculations were carried out only on a PC, now this platform is also available for Android-based mobile devices.
And there’s nothing to be surprised at: many mobile devices are constantly connected to the Network, and their performance is much higher than what computers 5-7 years old could "give out" (not to mention older models). The BOINC Android client is suitable for both smartphones and tablets. The most interesting thing is that both unofficial applications, such as NativeBOINC and AndroBOINC , and the official application, which appeared recently, are available.
However, for the official version there is so far only an alpha release , so you can not count on the reliable operation of this application.
The developers believe that the main idea of the application is the work of distributed projects not only on powerful hardware, but also on hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of mobile devices. In the above applications, there is a disconnect function if the phone is not connected to a WiFi network (of course, developers understand that few owners of mobile gadgets will be happy with a busy GPRS | EDGE | 3G channel).
In general, now every owner of a mobile device can become a participant in the search for extraterrestrial life, a project to calculate the climate model, or a