Distributed computing on your Palm Pre!
distributed.net (or Distributed Computing Technologies, Inc. or DCTI) is a worldwide distributed computing effort that is attempting to solve large scale problems using otherwise idle CPU time (from Wikipedia).
Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how well the Palm Pre would run the dnet client. Digging around on the dnet web site, I found a binary that worked.
Running ./dnetc -bench, I get the following results:
dnetc v2.9103-509-CTR-09010405 for Linux (Linux 2.6.24-palm-joplin-3430).
[Jul 27 00:05:21 UTC] OGR-NG: using core #0 (FLEGE 2.0).
[Jul 27 00:05:41 UTC] OGR-NG: Benchmark for core #0 (FLEGE 2.0)
0.00:00:16.65 [1,937,408 nodes/sec]
[Jul 27 00:05:41 UTC] OGR-NG: using core #1 (FLEGE 2.0 ARMv3).
[Jul 27 00:06:01 UTC] OGR-NG: Benchmark for core #1 (FLEGE 2.0 ARMv3)
0.00:00:16.84 [3,091,320 nodes/sec]
[Jul 27 00:06:01 UTC] OGR-NG: using core #2 (FLEGE 2.0 ARMv5).
[Jul 27 00:06:20 UTC] OGR-NG: Benchmark for core #2 (FLEGE 2.0 ARMv5)
0.00:00:16.75 [3,212,549 nodes/sec]
[Jul 27 00:06:20 UTC] OGR-NG benchmark summary :
Default core : #-1 (undefined)
Fastest core : #2 (FLEGE 2.0 ARMv5)
[Jul 27 00:06:20 UTC] RC5-72: using core #0 (StrongARM 1-pipe).
[Jul 27 00:06:39 UTC] RC5-72: Benchmark for core #0 (StrongARM 1-pipe)
0.00:00:17.03 [884,920 keys/sec]
[Jul 27 00:06:39 UTC] RC5-72: using core #1 (ARM 2/3/6/7 1-pipe).
[Jul 27 00:06:58 UTC] RC5-72: Benchmark for core #1 (ARM 2/3/6/7 1-pipe)
0.00:00:16.75 [852,741 keys/sec]
[Jul 27 00:06:58 UTC] RC5-72: using core #2 (XScale 1-pipe).
[Jul 27 00:07:16 UTC] RC5-72: Benchmark for core #2 (XScale 1-pipe)
0.00:00:16.24 [884,566 keys/sec]
[Jul 27 00:07:16 UTC] RC5-72 benchmark summary :
Default core : #-1 (undefined)
Fastest core : #0 (StrongARM 1-pipe)
Comparing this to results for different cores, it seems that the Palm Pre cpu is roughly the same speed (at running the dnet client) as a Pentium II or an Ultrasparc II. That’s said, a modern Core2 Duo runs over 10x faster so this is just for fun. As always, YMMV.
