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U OF SAN FRANCISCO CLASS TO BUILD "FLASH MOB" SUPERCOMPUTER

Patrick Miller, while brainstorming with his students at the University of San Francisco, decided that he and his class could build a "flash mob supercomputer" to be included in the list of the world's 500 fastest computers. Associate professor of computer science, Gregory D. Benson, will help the class build on the flash mob concept, which became popular last summer. Flash mobs are Internet-organized meetings with no particular purpose.

The class called out 1,200 volunteers for an April 3rd meeting at the school's Koret Gym. Everyone will plug into a shared high-speed network to create a virtual supercomputer.

Similar projects, like the SETI@home project, use spare computing cycles from participants' personal computers to harness supercomputing potential. Although other universities, like Virginia Tech, have used hundreds of personal computers to create supercomputers, it has yet to be done in one place, on one day.

The class did consider other options, however. One idea involved purchasing Xbox gaming consoles to link them together. Microsoft has made the necessary installation of Linux's free operating system onto such machines more difficult, though.

Flash mob computing is thought to be a new way for high school and community groups to utilize the computing power previously only available to large corporations and government labs.

The class plans to run Linpack, a speed benchmark program, and hopes the machine will reach 550 gigaflops so that it may be included in June's Top 500 List. Japan's Earth Simulator currently holds the number one spot -- it runs at 35 teraflops, or 35,000 gigaflops.

University of Tennessee computer scientist Jack Dongarra maintains the Top 500 list. He believes that the students may succeed in making the list, but notes that electrical power could cause problems. In light of this, students are requesting that participants have at least a 1.3 gigahertz Pentium or AMD processor and 256 megabytes of memory. In addition, laptops are preferred for their lower power usage compared to that of desktops.

Heat could also pose a problem, with over 1,000 computers and volunteers packed into the gym. Organizers note, however, that the gym's high ceiling should alleviate such concerns.

The students will be able to break down and compute the equations of the benchmark program once all the machines are plugged together through donated high-speed networking switches. Though it depends on the size of the problem, the network could solve it in around 4 hours. A single desktop would take about 4,000 hours, and the fastest computer could solve it in 4.8 minutes.

After the experiment, the computer will be reworked to host a large multi-player video game tournament.