How is FlashMob Computing different? Today supercomputing can be divided into two categories: Big Iron and Grid Computing.
Big Iron "Big iron" supercomputing dates back to World War II. Historically, supercomputers like the old Cray Supercomputers, or the current reigning champion, Japan's Earth Simulator, are hideously expensive custom machines that use custom parts and are constructed by PhD's to do very specific things. Recently Apple and Virginia Tech made headlines by networking 1100 Apple G5's together and creating the 3rd fastest supercomputer for the low-low price of $5 million (which is an impressively big step down from the estimated $1 B-B-Billion dollars the Earth Simulator cost). But still, unless you have a couple of million lying around, supercomputers of this kind are pretty much still out of reach.
Grid Computing Then there's Grid Computing. Grid Computing is based on the idea that most computers are idle most of the time. So, instead of a screen saver with flying toasters, let's put the computer to work. SETI@Home is the best known example of a grid computer. Users install a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data looking for patterns in the data that might be signs of extraterrestrial life (i.e. the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence AKA SETI). SETI@home is pretty awesome but you need a **lot** of computers (currently SETI@Home has roughly half-a-million active computers at any one time) and grid computing is only good for certain kinds of problems. (More on that later.)
FlashMob Computing FlashMob I is something new in the world of supercomputers. FlashMob I is an ad-hoc supercomputer created on-the-fly using ordinary PC's interconnected via a well-organized LAN. A FlashMob computer has no permanent infrastructure, it's designed to be run in a gymnasium or a warehouse. There are no cooling towers, no expensive T-3's connected to the Internet, no custom hardware. The primary cost of a FlashMob computer is people's time.
Comparing FlashMob Computing to Grid and Big Iron Before you can compare the three, you have to understand what makes a computer a "supercomputer" and a little about the kinds of problems supercomputers solve.
A supercomputer is a computer that has a lot of CPU's working in parallel on a single problem. The smallest supercomputers typically have more than 64 CPU's; the Earth Simulator has 5120 CPU's. So your dual-CPU gaming machine does not count as a supercomputer. Sorry. Morever, if you brought 64 friends over for a LAN party to play Quake, you still don't have a supercomputer because the 64 machines are not all working on solving one single problem. Sorry again. It's both the parallelism and the singularity of purpose that defines a supercomputer. So what can I do with a supercomputer?
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