Uni researchers plan to build a low-carbon data center hivemind from 2,000 Pixel smartphones—with Google's help, no less

E-waste is a massive environmental problem. So are current data center plans, if recent reports are to be believed. However, a team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego, have come up with an intriguing idea: They plan to use 2,000 Google Pixel smartphones to build a cloud computing data center with already-existing tech.

According to a Google Research blog post, on average, people replace their smartphones every four years (via Hothardware). However, many modern (yet outdated, in terms of our constant desire for shiny new things) examples have processors, memory, and storage chips that are relatively powerful, particularly when you chain them together.

That's wasted hardware, and an ecological concern when you think of the ext...