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DrPop
03-18-14, 04:51 PM
Anybody ever done a calculation for credits / watt on these little android devices? I've got POGs running now on an old Motorola Atrix 4G (MB 860) that Zombie convinced me to crunch with. ;) I'm just curious what the efficiency might be of the ARM chips inside these things compared to our Intel / AMD hogs. BOINC says it's an ARMV7 rev 0 (v7l), which I have found out is the instruction set.
Specs sheets on 'Net tell me the Atrix 4G has the Nvidia Tegra2 (Dual Cortex A9) inside. I can find all kinds of info except the wattage. Best guess?

Looks like I'm getting 0.0066 credits per second on this thing. I wonder how many watts it's sucking down?
My i7 gets 0.026 credits per second. That's 4x the credits per second per WU, and the i7 crunches on 8 of those WUs every second of course. So (for sake of easy academics) let's say the i7 burns 96W to do 32X the work as the ARM CPU (4 x 8).

This means the Intel i7 Sandy Bridge would burn 3W for every equivalent crunched WU of the ARM CPU. hmmm... so it's definitely a possibility, that if the Tegra 2 CPU is using less than 3W, it is actually more efficient to crunch with than an i7! :p And I read somewhere the Tegra 4 is considerably more efficient than this old Tegra 2 in this example. Imagine that efficiency...but certainly not as effective as the i7 for building up the credits quickly. ;)

Slicker
03-20-14, 11:02 AM
So the moral of the story is that if you want to talk to SETI, use a cell phone but if you want to crunch SETI, use a computer. Hmmmm... I guess the new Collatz app for GE microwave ovens probably isn't the best idea either.

DrPop
03-20-14, 11:24 AM
... Hmmmm... I guess the new Collatz app for GE microwave ovens probably isn't the best idea either.

:)) I wonder when those will run on Android OS as well?!! =)) Hmmm...guess it's not so far fetched actually; cameras (not smart phone variety) are already being made to run on Android. Imagine the "convenience" of catching your house on fire by remotely starting your nuker from afar - and forgetting it was on, or hitting "100 Min" on accident instead of "10 Min"! :P

Bryan
03-20-14, 11:28 AM
Hmmmm... I guess the new Collatz app for GE microwave ovens probably isn't the best idea either.

Yeh, that's a dumb idea! It should be for GE refrigerators since they have better cooling :D

John P. Myers
03-21-14, 08:07 PM
...if the Tegra 2 CPU is using less than 3W, it is actually more efficient to crunch with than an i7!

Actually i believe the Tegra 2 uses right at 3W. That includes the GPU portion of the chip being active too.

FourOh
06-12-14, 10:26 AM
I just got an Amazon Fire TV - it has a quad-core processor with 2Gb RAM... how long before I can CRUNCH on it?! :p

https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire-tv/docs/device-and-platform-specifications

John P. Myers
06-12-14, 10:57 AM
Well...it *does* run Android :D

Mumps
06-12-14, 01:08 PM
And it's an ARMv7 platform...

Sarge104
06-13-14, 09:12 AM
Madness, I say, madness...heheheh

FourOh
01-12-15, 10:15 AM
I just got an Amazon Fire TV - it has a quad-core processor with 2Gb RAM... how long before I can CRUNCH on it?! :p

https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire-tv/docs/device-and-platform-specifications

I'm not sure what took me so long, but I finally took a stab at running BOINC on the Amazon Fire TV. I was able to sideload the Android App and I have World Community Grid running on four cores! I'm not generating a ton of credits (maybe 400-500 points/day), but it is helping me log WCG hours using very little power. I'm not sure how to get WUProp running, as the app gives a list of projects to choose from. There does not appear to be a way to enter a project URL.

Hopefully when new Ebola work is issued, I'll be able to catch some Android units on this. And let's see, at about $100 each, I could have a Zombie-style stack of android crunchers on the cheap! :cool:

http://stats.free-dc.org/stats.php?page=hostbycpid&cpid=b5947688a1590b2825918c728326e241

John P. Myers
01-13-15, 02:13 AM
Ha! That's pretty awesome right there. Nice job!