I have an idea, let's make Folding@home work on Android again

[nerufu]

I have an idea, let's make Folding@home work on Android again. 

I have no C skills but maybe there is someone who could do that.

 

https://github.com/FoldingAtHome/FAHAndroid 

 

I would love to install it on my devices. 

[FloRolf]

tbh even if it was a thing again i wouldn't use it. 

It'll be slow af and go crazy bad on the battery.

[Jurrunio]

Yeah... We're talking desktop Vega 8 GPU taking around a whole day per WU, an android device will be much slower than that

[nerufu]

Of course not every one will use that, but at least I would love to run it at night and contribute a little bit more.

Not everyone have powerfull GPU, but almost everyone have phone, if we join our forces we can provide a lot of computing power even from phones

[Harshit0601]

It would be good for people who don't have a desktop but still want to do something to help

 

[Lo-teq]

im not 100% but i think it would be that slow that the WU would expire, and therefore wouldn't actually help

[warmon6]

On 3/26/2020 at 5:39 AM, Jurrunio said:

Yeah... We're talking desktop Vega 8 GPU taking around a whole day per WU, an android device will be much slower than that

 

8 hours ago, Lo-teq said:

im not 100% but i think it would be that slow that the WU would expire, and therefore wouldn't actually help

 

This assumes the WU's on an Android Phone will be the same as a GPU or CPU WU that your desktop/laptop is using. 

 

Which is an incorrect assumption to make.The F@H group has historically tailored made WU's and Folding Cores to work on the targeted hardware. So if the hardware isn't as capable as a modern X86 cpu or gpu, then the WU's are scaled back in either size or complexity to best fit the hardware. (or if the hardware had unique properties that F@H could benefit from, then those cores and WU's were design to use it).

 

Folding was possible on both PlayStation 3 and even the hardware in our subject, Android Phones, in the past but sony drop support for both of them and F@H didn't take up the task to maintain it themselves (Sony was the one that created and maintained the app on the phone). 

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sonymobile.androidapp.gridcomputing&hl=en

https://foldingforum.org/viewforum.php?f=100

 

And thats probably the bigger issue than "it'll be to slow". The issue is that F@H Group needs to support it and create Cores and WU's to do it. Something that currently, doesn't seem to be in the cards... (certainly with the Covid-19 pandemic going on). 

 

 

Also as a little history note, GPU folding on desktop/laptop used be the same way when it came to WU's and Cores. If you had an Nvidia Card, you ran different WU's and Cores than an AMD/ATI card. 

It wasn't until the summer of 2013 when Core 17 was released that AMD/ATI & Nvidia Cards could process the same WU's

https://foldingathome.org/2013/06/29/welcome-to-fahcore-17-2/

 

 

Spoiler

This also holds true today on the desktop/Laptop. It is still different cores and WU's for CPU and GPU last I checked.

I know there was talk about creating a Core that would work on both cpu and gpu a long time ago but I can see that project/core never materialized. If it did come to light, the same WU's that you see on your CPU could be processed on your GPU and Vise-Versa instead of different WU's for different Hardware.

As of currently project makers in the F@H group have to decide what project will run best on what hardware.