A flash mob computing (also flash mob computer) is a temporary ad-hoc computer cluster running specific software to coordinate the individual computers into one single supercomputer. A flash mob computer is distinct from other types of computer clusters in that it is set up and broken down on the same day or over a similar brief amount of time and involves many independent owners of computers coming together at a central physical location to work on a specific problem and/or social event. Linux Cluster at Purdue University A computer cluster is a group of loosely coupled computers that work together closely so that in many respects it can be viewed as though it were a single computer. ... Computer software (or simply software) refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. ... A computer is a device or machine for processing information from data according to a program — a compiled list of instructions. ... We use computer to go on the porn site ...

Flash mob computer derives its name from the more general term flash mob which can mean any activity involving many people co-ordinated through virtual communities coming together for brief periods of time for a specific task or event. Flash mob computing is a more specific type of flash mob for the purpose of bringing people and their computers together to work on a single task or event. A flash mob is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, do something unusual or notable, and then disperse. ...

The first flash mob computer, April 3, 2004, University of San Francisco gymnasium. Note the temporary location, variety of individual computers and central switch. Click to enlarge.

The first flash mob computer was created on April 3, 2004 at the University of San Francisco using software written at USF called FlashMob (not to be confused with the more general term flash mob). The event, called FlashMob I, was a fantastic success. There was a call for computers on the computer news website Slashdot and over 700 computers came to the gym at the University of San Francisco and were wired to a network donated by Foundry Networks. At FlashMob I they were able to run a benchmark on 256 of the computers and achieved a peak rate of 180 Gflops (billions of calculations per second), although this computation stopped three quarters of the way through due to a node failure. The best, complete run used 150 computers and resulted in 77 Gflops. FlashMob I was run off a bootable CD-ROM that ran a copy of Morphix Linux and was only available for the x86 platform. Download high resolution version (1536x1024, 523 KB) This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... Download high resolution version (1536x1024, 523 KB) This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... April 3 is the 93rd day of the year (94th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 272 days remaining. ... 2004(MMIV) is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... April 3 is the 93rd day of the year (94th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 272 days remaining. ... 2004(MMIV) is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The University of San Francisco (often abbreviated USF) is a private, coeducational Jesuit university in the United States. ... A flash mob is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, do something unusual or notable, and then disperse. ... Slashdot (often abbreviated to /.) is a popular technology-related website, updated many times daily with articles that are short summaries of stories on other websites with links to the stories, and provisions for readers to comment on the story. ... A wide variety of systems of interconnected components are called networks. ... Foundry Networks is a network system vendor selling high-end managed ethernet switches. ... In computing, FLOPS is an abbreviation of FLoating point Operations Per Second. ... Morphix desktop Morphix is a modular Linux distribution, based on Knoppix (which is in turn based on Debian). ... Unix systems filiation. ... x86 or 80x86 is the generic name of a microprocessor architecture first developed and manufactured by Intel. ...

Creators of flash mob computing

Pat Miller Pat is a research scientist at a national Lab and adjunct professor at USF. His class on Do-It-Yourself Supercomputers is what/who has evolved into FlashMob I from the original idea of every student bringing a commodity CPU or an XBox to class to make an evanescent cluster at each meeting. Pat hacks on all aspects of the FlashMob software.

Greg Benson USF Associate Professor of Computer Science, invented the name "flash mob computing", and proposed the first idea of wireless flash mob computers. Pat's class ran with it from there. Greg's research areas include parallel computing, operating systems, and programming languages. Greg hacks on the core infrastructure of the FlashMob run time environment.

John Witchel John is a USF graduate student in Computer Science. After talking to Greg about the issues of networking a stadium of wireless computers and listening to Pat lecture on what it takes to break the Top 500, John asked the simple question: "Couldn't we just invite people off the street and get enough power to break the Top 500?" And flash mob supercomputing was born.. FlashMob I and the FlashMob software was John's master's thesis. TOP500 (www. ...

See also

• Flash mob
• Supercomputer

A flash mob is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, do something unusual or notable, and then disperse. ... We use computer to go on the porn site ...

External links

• San Francisco Flashmob Attempts Supercomputer Original Slashdot article
• FlashMobComputing.org