Folding Forum

Is there any work being done to port the Folding@Home app to the iPhone and/or iPod Touch version of Mac OS X? If not, why not?

I think it would be a waiste of time. There been request for an xbox360 version as well, and it's not being considerd because the computation capabilities of these devices is to low to put effort into developing a client for it.

Think about it, what cpu does your iphone have? And another notion, how quick would your battery be drained empty having it fold.

No work is being done on those platforms. Stanford has limited development resources, and they are currently focused on the most powerful processors. Quad core CPUs, and GPUs, and the PS3. If they ever have the spare resources to work on clients for less powerful processors, I'm sure they would consider all possible options.

According to Wikipedia, the most recent iPhones run on a 412 MHz ARM processor. I've heard that the slowest possible CPU that can run any F@h client is a 500 or 600 MHz Pentium III, so even on clock speed the iPhone's too slow. That's not even taking into account the lack of SSE coding, or any of the other special architectures that greatly speed up calculations on desktop processors.

I doubt we'll ever see a client for any sort of handheld device (iPhone, other cellphones, PSP, DS, etc.) because a) they won't run fast enough/work off of advanced enough hardware to run F@h at anything resembling a useful speed and b) running CPU-maxing software on a primarily battery-driven device is generally not a good idea and will wear down batteries much quicker than regular use, something that the manufacturers aren't too keen to have happen. As the case with Microsoft and the 360 has shown, companies generally don't want to license software for their hardware if the hardware has a much higher chance of damaging the hardware.

You can't compare an ARM processor and a P3 ... they're completely different. The ARM processors are not designed for computing power, they're designed to be low power processors.

toTOW wrote:You can't compare an ARM processor and a P3 ... they're completely different. The ARM processors are not designed for computing power, they're designed to be low power processors.

That doesn't invalidates claim that embededs are slightly FPU unaware though. While I totally agree -- we can't compare clocks of ARM and i386.

toTOW wrote:You can't compare an ARM processor and a P3 ... they're completely different. The ARM processors are not designed for computing power, they're designed to be low power processors.

And that's why I put in the disclaimer about architectures. I know that straight clock-to-clock comparisons don't tell the whole story.

FAH expects to use 100% of the processor's resources any time that you're not using it for something else. That pretty much precludes ANY client designed for a battery power device. The PC laptop, of course, can run the same software as a desktop computer of the same variety and almost everybody decides it depletes the battery too fast to be useful except if the laptop is being used plugged into the mains.

A laptop battery weighs maybe a pound and can run FAH for maybe ¾ hour. YMMV.

I have a laptop, and it can run F@h for more than an hour. On the other hand, I did upgrade to a 12-cell battery, so that's probably why. And F@h doesn't run nearly as efficiently on battery anyway (I get around 950 PPD on the SMP client plugged in, and I think it drops to around 700 PPD on battery in max performance mode).

Not sure what the current processing specs are on the devices, but I'm sure it's quite fast...and would bring in some nice computing usage if we had an application for it.

Any suggestions ?

Hello and welcome to the forum.

There is already a similar discussion: Threads merged. -- toTOW

What about a Nintendo Wii? I don't know about its cpu power and that's why I'm asking.

The forum search tool is your friend. http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=713

The project web site search tool is your friend. http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-main#ntoc60

NVIDIA has sold 70 000 000 CUCA capable cards as of mid 2008. There's about 20000 of them folding right now.
Now here's my cunning plan: take the money you would need to develop an iphone-client (you may add toothbrush-client, toaster-client, can-opener-client, fridge-client, etc.) and stuff it into a PR campaign for folding.
2nd cunning plan: donate 1% of your annual folding costs(HW+electricity) into a PR campain for folding.
If you just double the numbers of participating users/cards ...

Eveofwar wrote:Not sure what the current processing specs are on the devices, but I'm sure it's quite fast...and would bring in some nice computing usage if we had an application for it.
Any suggestions ?

Yes! I'm quite sure, the other 69 980 000 already sold NVIDIA cards are fast as well. Did I mention the 2 000 000 4xxx ATI-cards? Not to forget the annual sold 650 000 000 CPUs and the 21,384,315 PS3 sold. Sometimes I think you (and me) do not see the wood for the trees.

toTOW wrote:You can't compare an ARM processor and a P3 ... they're completely different. The ARM processors are not designed for computing power, they're designed to be low power processors.

Used to be true but not true anymore base on the latest ARM development. A power to be reckon with. If INTEL is not careful it may not be the CPU of choice in the future

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/displa ... cture.html
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastruct ... el-109631/