Einstein@Home on Android Devices

Submitted on 22 Jul 2013 16:00:03 UTC

Starting today, Einstein@Home will run on your Android smartphones and tablets. If you own a device running Android 2.3 or higher please sign it up: download BOINC from the Google Play Store and attach to Einstein@Home. Your Android device will help us to find new radio pulsars in data from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the world's largest radio telescope. We'd also be grateful if you could report your "Android experiences" in this forum thread.

Thank you for supporting Einstein@Home!

Bruce Allen
Director, Einstein@Home

Comments

Alex
Alex
Joined: 1 Mar 05
Posts: 451
Credit: 507064930
RAC: 87789

My new device arrived

18 Sep 2013 8:33:43 UTC
Message 118051
(moderation:
    )

    My new device arrived yesterday. Out-of-the-box performance is: ~7hrs 13min for a NEON wu.

    ODROID-XU
    The world’s first big.LITTLE architecture based bare-board computer.
    • Exynos5 Octa Cortex™-A15 1.6Ghz quad core and Cortex™-A7 quad core CPUs
    • PowerVR SGX544MP3 GPU (OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1 and OpenCL 1.1 EP)
    • 2Gbyte LPDDR3 RAM PoP
    • USB 3.0 Host x 1, USB 3.0 OTG x 1, USB 2.0 Host x 4
    • HDMI 1.4a output Type-D connector
    • eMMC 4.5 Flash Storage

    Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
    Bikeman (Heinz-...
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    RE: My new device arrived

    18 Sep 2013 14:19:08 UTC
    Message 118052 in response to message 118051
    (moderation:
      )

      Quote:
      My new device arrived yesterday. Out-of-the-box performance is: ~7hrs 13min for a NEON wu.

      ODROID-XU
      The world’s first big.LITTLE architecture based bare-board computer.
      • Exynos5 Octa Cortex™-A15 1.6Ghz quad core and Cortex™-A7 quad core CPUs
      • PowerVR SGX544MP3 GPU (OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1 and OpenCL 1.1 EP)
      • 2Gbyte LPDDR3 RAM PoP
      • USB 3.0 Host x 1, USB 3.0 OTG x 1, USB 2.0 Host x 4
      • HDMI 1.4a output Type-D connector
      • eMMC 4.5 Flash Storage

      Interesting, thanks for the info.

      If you should ever happen to run Linux on this one, I would be very, very interested to see how our NEON enabled Linux test app performs on this platform in order to compare Android and Linux on ARM. The test App is only available by participating at our test project so far: http://albert.phys.uwm.edu but the workunits should be the same size, thus comparable to the ones at Einstein@Home.

      One might thing that the OS should not make a difference, but in this particular case of ARM CPUs, Android and Linux (for ARMv7) use a different convention to pass around floating point data inside programs and between libraries, so there actually should be a significant difference (expected result would be that the Linux app is a bit faster).

      Cheers
      HB

      Alex
      Alex
      Joined: 1 Mar 05
      Posts: 451
      Credit: 507064930
      RAC: 87789

      RE: If you should ever

      18 Sep 2013 17:10:45 UTC
      Message 118053 in response to message 118052
      (moderation:
        )

        Quote:

        If you should ever happen to run Linux on this one, I would be very, very interested to see how our NEON enabled Linux test app performs on this platform in order to compare Android and Linux on ARM.

        Definitely yes, but it will take at least 14 days or so. A big project must be finished until saturday and next week I'm on a training course, but afterwards ...

        Regards

        Alex

        Mike Hewson
        Mike Hewson
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        I notice that my Android now

        24 Sep 2013 2:22:40 UTC
        Message 118054
        (moderation:
          )

          I notice that my Android now has a name "android_318dd436" under BOINC ( rather than just "localhost" ) : a MAC address thingy attached there ??

          Cheers, Mike.

          I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

          ... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

          Claggy
          Claggy
          Joined: 29 Dec 06
          Posts: 560
          Credit: 2699403
          RAC: 0

          RE: I notice that my

          24 Sep 2013 13:51:12 UTC
          Message 118055 in response to message 118054
          (moderation:
            )

            Quote:

            I notice that my Android now has a name "android_318dd436" under BOINC ( rather than just "localhost" ) : a MAC address thingy attached there ??

            Cheers, Mike.


            Doesn't use MAC address, but a random string:

            Quote:

            client (Android): use random string for domain name

            parse domain_name from state file
            if it's empty, generate one of the form android_xxxxxxxx
            don't use MAC address

            Changeset be0c85a9 in boinc-v2

            Claggy

            Claggy
            Claggy
            Joined: 29 Dec 06
            Posts: 560
            Credit: 2699403
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            Another interesting code

            24 Sep 2013 13:56:47 UTC
            Message 118056 in response to message 118054
            (moderation:
              )

              Another interesting code change is the 'Model' name column that is on Seti and Seti Beta's 'Your computers' page (not made it here or to Albert yet), this displays the device model name and SDK,
              in the case of my HTC One S, it shows 'HTC HTC One S - SDK:16 ABI: armeabi-v7a', while my Nexus 7 shows 'asus Nexus 7 - SDK:18 ABI: armeabi-v7a'

              Claggy

              Mike Hewson
              Mike Hewson
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              Joined: 1 Dec 05
              Posts: 6588
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              Thanks Claggy! :-) That

              24 Sep 2013 22:55:53 UTC
              Message 118057
              (moderation:
                )

                Thanks Claggy! :-)

                That change is a useful thing, after all if we have users with more than one Android host then they'll want to distinguish those readily when viewing stats etc. I remember the MAC address problem : they are supposed to be, but aren't all necessarily unique ( naughty network card makers ).

                Cheers, Mike.

                I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

                ... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

                Richard Haselgrove
                Richard Haselgrove
                Joined: 10 Dec 05
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                People raised privacy and

                24 Sep 2013 23:15:18 UTC
                Message 118058 in response to message 118057
                (moderation:
                  )

                  People raised privacy and security concerns, too.

                  Alex
                  Alex
                  Joined: 1 Mar 05
                  Posts: 451
                  Credit: 507064930
                  RAC: 87789

                  RE: RE: My new device

                  12 Oct 2013 21:39:57 UTC
                  Message 118059 in response to message 118052
                  (moderation:
                    )

                    Quote:
                    Quote:
                    My new device arrived yesterday. Out-of-the-box performance is: ~7hrs 13min for a NEON wu.

                    ODROID-XU
                    The world’s first big.LITTLE architecture based bare-board computer.
                    • Exynos5 Octa Cortex™-A15 1.6Ghz quad core and Cortex™-A7 quad core CPUs
                    • PowerVR SGX544MP3 GPU (OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1 and OpenCL 1.1 EP)
                    • 2Gbyte LPDDR3 RAM PoP
                    • USB 3.0 Host x 1, USB 3.0 OTG x 1, USB 2.0 Host x 4
                    • HDMI 1.4a output Type-D connector
                    • eMMC 4.5 Flash Storage

                    Interesting, thanks for the info.

                    If you should ever happen to run Linux on this one, I would be very, very interested to see how our NEON enabled Linux test app performs on this platform in order to compare Android and Linux on ARM. The test App is only available by participating at our test project so far: http://albert.phys.uwm.edu but the workunits should be the same size, thus comparable to the ones at Einstein@Home.

                    One might thing that the OS should not make a difference, but in this particular case of ARM CPUs, Android and Linux (for ARMv7) use a different convention to pass around floating point data inside programs and between libraries, so there actually should be a significant difference (expected result would be that the Linux app is a bit faster).

                    Cheers
                    HB

                    Hi,
                    after running 3 weeks the android app I found some time this weekend to prepare a micro-SD card with xubuntu 13.04 desktop.
                    This works.
                    But since I'm an absolut analphabet in all aspects referring Linux I need something like a how-to-do guide to run the albert app. I even did not find a BM for Linux arm (BOINC homepage offers only a Linux x86 version).

                    If anyone living in Vienna is able and willing to give me some help I would be glad to meet him/her.

                    Cheers
                    Alex