Google-backed smartphone data center project

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego are developing a computing cluster using 2,000 retired Google Pixel smartphones. The devices are stripped to their motherboards and managed via Kubernetes to serve as a low-carbon platform for university coursework in parallel programming.

Early testing with a 20-phone cluster demonstrated performance comparable to traditional servers for specific academic workloads. The full 2,000-device system is scheduled to launch this fall.