FlashMob Computing is a fascinating concept and the first attempt on April 3 was at least partially successful:
- Results:
FlashMob I was very successful and a lot of fun. Over 700 computers came into the gym and we were able to hook up 669 to the network. Our best Linpack result was a peak rate of 180 Gflops using 256 computers, however a node failed 75% through the computation. Our best completed result was 77 Gflops using 150 computers. The biggest challenge was indentifying flakely computers and determining the best configuration for running the benchmark. Each of the 669 computers ran Linpack at some point in the day.
The concept:
- Today, supercomputing is controlled largely by governmental organizations, academic research institutions, animation studios, and recently biotech companies. This means that the problems that get solved by supercomputers are narrow in scope and tightly controlled. We want to change that.
We think that a group of folks should be able to get together and study whatever they want, and they should be able to use a supercomputer to help them. So if a high school science class wanted to study the ozone hole using a supercomputer model, they could create a FlashMob supercomputer in a few hours and start running their model today. If a group of neighbors were worried about how a local gas station's underground gas tank might leak into the drinking water if the tank ever cracked, they could use Flash Mob Computing to model the scenario. In short, we hope Flash Mob Computing will democratize supercomputing. That is to say, it will make supercomputing accessible to everyone. To us, that's a very exciting idea.
....Just what is Flash Mob Computing and FlashMob I?
A Flash Mob supercomputer is hundreds or even thousands of computers connected together via a LAN working together as a single supercomputer. A Flash Mob computer, unlike an ordinary cluster, is temporary and organized on-the-fly for the purpose of working on a single problem. Flash Mob I is the first of its kind. By bringing hundreds of people like you together in one room, we will have enough computing power to become one of the fastest supercomputers on the planet.
....FlashMob I is the brainchild of a group of graduate students at USF studying supercomputers. Our hope at the beginning of the semester was to build a supercomputer that would make the Top 500 list of supercomputers. After some back-of-the-envelope calculations, we concluded that we were about 100 computers short of having a good shot. Someone raised their hand and said: "We could post a message on Craig's List and get a hundred people to just show up." Thus the idea of FlashMob Computing was born.
Article comments