Linux will be used to create a giant, temporary supercomputer from normal PCs brought by volunteers to an event tomorrow in San Francisco billed as the first of its kind. “FlashMob” will showcase technology enabling ordinary people with standard PCs to create a supercomputer in a matter of hours.

The FlashMob event is sponsored by Foundry Networks, Myricom, and HP.

“This is a radical new idea in supercomputing, as well as an important scientific and social experiment,” said John Witchel, co-creator of FlashMob supercomputing. “The goal of the FlashMob I project is to demonstrate the viability of widespread supercomputing. We hope to give ordinary citizens the power to explore and address problems that are most important to them — whether it's a high-school science class looking to participate in study of global warming, or a family impacted by breast cancer, or even a chess club looking to build an electronic grand-master. Our ability to harness the power and promise of supercomputing will directly impact our individual and global well-being and prosperity.”

Volunteers for the first FlashMob will begin assembling at 8 A.M. tomorrow at the University of San Francisco's Koret Center Gym. Volunteers with PCs are assigned arrival times when registering.

Volunteers are asked to bring a Pentium III/AMD equivalent running at 1.3 GHz or faster, with at least 256MB of RAM, a 100 Base-T network connection, and a CD-ROM.

Volunteers will attach their computers to a network, and boot their PCs from CD-ROMs running a Linux kernel and other open source software that enables them to work as part of a single, distributed memory machine. The Linux OS runs in memory, without touching the disk.

At 1 P.M., and again at 5 P.M., Linmark benchmarking software will be run.

After the event, the project will publish an .iso image enabling anyone to burn CDs and create their own FlashMob supercomputer. The FlashMob Website will track the benchmark results for the top 500 FlashMobs.

Benchmark results from the first FlashMob will be submitted for inclusion in the Top 500 Supercomputers site.

More details, and an online registration form, are available at the FlashMob Website.

 
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