Folding@Mobile?

[Ericson_Mar]

Is there any way to get folding on a mobile phone? Or is it in the works? I just thought of that because my phone for the “most part” does nothing but sit around for $45 a month so it would be cool to make it work.

[Ivoshiee]

It would be cool, but pretty much useless - mobile devices are weak number crunchers. The typical FAH WU will take easily a year to complete and no one is willing to wonder to that direction!

[Ericson_Mar]

It would be cool, but pretty much useless - mobile devices are weak number crunchers. The typical FAH WU will take easily a year to complete and no one is willing to wonder to that direction!

Really? Even today's PDA phones?

[Ivoshiee]

It would be cool, but pretty much useless - mobile devices are weak number crunchers. The typical FAH WU will take easily a year to complete and no one is willing to wonder to that direction!

Really? Even today's PDA phones?

Yes.

[bruce]

Phones, PDA or otherwise, are severely limited by battery life. They're effectively designed to minimze power between the times that the processor has to wake up and do something. Running continuously (even if the CPU could handle the workload, which is doubtful) would only be practical when the unit is connected to the charger.

Compare a phone to a typical Laptop computer where you carry around maybe half a pound of battery and which still has a setting that allows you to suspend processing whenever you switch from operating on AC to operating on battery.

Your phone battery would probably be dead within a matter of a few minutes.

[Ericson_Mar]

I suppose. But PDA phones are usually charging or "docked" a lot by default anyway. Otherwise it won't last that long anyways. So at night, you would be looking at maybe 8 hours or more of CPU. And at "work" it could be docked a long time too. I know that it's always charging in my home. Even via USB when my computer is off. And throught the years I've had PDA's it was always docked at work. They are pretty fast now, like 400+ MHz. And multi core too. I know it's not exaclty equivalent to a x86 CPU but I imagine it has a bit of worth power.

[7im]

Great idea, but it's not going to get top priority when Pande Group has limited development resources.

Sorry to be blunt... with 8 and 16 core Intel processors and multicored GPUs just over the horizon, that heavy iron is going to be the focus of future developments. That's where the Project gets the most science bang for the development buck. Not from some 1990 sub-Pentium class single core processor that can only fold part time, sitting in a dock.