Researchers at the University of California San Diego have shown how retired smartphones can be wired together into low-cost computing clusters. These small data centers built from devices that would otherwise become waste are taking new shape into something the team calls "phone cluster computing."
The process starts with stripping down the phone to its motherboard, removing the display, battery, and cameras — partly because some components, like batteries, aren't rated for a data-center environment. What's left gets networked into clusters that run real workloads.
