This Google-backed ‘phone cluster computing’ project is turning retired Pixels into low-cost Linux data centers — as UCSD researchers say a 2,000-phone cluster will soon support 100 computer science classes
- Google is working on an intriguing way to give old phones a new life
- Their motherboards would be used as makeshift cloud servers
- This could save money and reduce the industry’s environmental impact
What happens when you recycle your old phone? In most cases it’ll be stripped for parts, but the smartphone itself doesn’t usually live on in any meaningful way. Things might look different in the future, though, as a new project from Google is giving discarded phones a new life in the cloud.
The tech giant has teamed up with researchers from the University of California San Diego to find ways in which old smartphones can be reused past their sell-by date, and one particularly promising avenue is as replacement servers. The idea is to both reduce the raw materials needed to manufacture new servers and cut down on the emissions that result from that manufacturing process.
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