Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and Google have given old Pixel smartphones a new lease of life. The project involves repurposing old phones into low-cost data centers.
The researchers stripped the phones of their screens, batteries, cameras, and other unnecessary parts, leaving only the motherboard. The Android operating system was then removed and replaced with a Linux operating system used in data centers.
According to the study, the single-core performance of smartphones manufactured just three years ago outperforms some modern server processors. Tests have shown that the computing power generated by 25-50 old phones can be equal to the power of a single server-class processor.
UCSD estimates that a cluster of 20 phones can run the applications needed by a class of more than 75 students. The university plans to build a local data center of 2,000 old phones in the future, serving hundreds of classes at the same time.
The main goal of the project is to reduce the volume of electronic waste, reuse old devices, and create a cheaper computing infrastructure for educational institutions.
