Flash Mob Supercomputer? 259
dan of the north writes "The NY Times (free reg yyy bbb) is running an article on flash mob computing. More info on the first event in SF on April 3, 2004. The goal is to run Linpack and "build a home-brew computer powerful enough to be added to a list of the world's 500 fastest computers." Minimum requirements are 1.3 GHZ Pentium III/AMD equivalent or better with 256MB of RAM, a 100 Base-T network connection and a CD-ROM - laptops preferred. "After taking a shot at a speed record, the computer will be reorganized to serve as the host of a giant multiplayer video game tournament." Cool... a 2fer!"
I'm there! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not combine it with wardriving? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OK, here is the deal (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Wicked. (Score:5, Insightful)
Crowd: *yells*
Singer (to promoter): What the hell is a node anyways?
Promoter: Don't worry about it, just go with it!
Singer (to crowd again): I said let me see those fuckin' nodes!
Crowd: *yells louder*
Singer: Fuck right. That's what I fuckin' like to hear. Now, for our next motherfuckin' song, I want to see the most massive, the most fuckin' atrocious motherfuckin' pit on this motherfuckin' planet.
Yeah, that scenario was implausible. Thus, I don't see supercomputers in concerts anytime soon.
It will never work? (Score:5, Insightful)
It could actually work.
Re:OK, here is the deal (Score:2, Insightful)
1200 laptops could be a big problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, let's generously assume that each laptop is drawing half an amp at 110 volts. At 1200 laptops, that's 600 amps. The circuit breakers in my house trip at 15 amps, but I'll generously assume this facility has 50 amp wall circuits. That would still require 12 entire circuits, plus a safety factor, nevermind all my generous back-of-envelope assumptions.
Okay, so assuming they've got a lot of extension cords, now we just have to deal with space. Let's assume, again, generously, that each person + computer + associated infrastructure needs only one square meter of floor space. This makes the space requirement equivalent to a 30m x 40m area, or about two World Cup soccer fields. I hope they've got one hell of a big gym.
Heat is, by comparison, a relatively minor issue. If the facility can handle a crowd that large, adding their low-power laptops is minor. People tend to dissipate about 100 watts anyway, so the laptops won't be the most significant source of difficulty.
It sounds like a very daunting task they have ahead of them. I hope they've already gotten these problems figured out, because this project sounds really cool.
Erm, well good luck....you'll need it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but you require a minimum of a 100 Base-T connection. You want to create one of the world's top 100 supercomputers using Ethernet? Good luck in beating that latency, guys....next time, see if you can get a flash mob of infiniband vendors to come along for the ride.
Re:Tough one to call... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What, no macs? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not sure the SOFTWARE aspect of this "Super Computer" but, uh... maybe the programmers are coding this in a Microsoft language...
Mentioned before is SETI@home (software distributed amongst many clients) and another (I'm too lazy to scroll back up and read). This "Psuedo-Supercomputer" aspect is mearly a distributed software application which shares data over a network. All hosts must run a program to "Link" them together in such a manner that they distribute the computing. Therefore, the platform of which this client is programmed for would be the limiting factor in the sucessfull implementation of this "SuperComputer". (eventually they may write clients for other platforms... but it sounds like they have settled on the PC for now).
Plus, they are Macs... heh. (what I mean by this is that I have an underlying contempt for something I can't rip open and reassemble the guts of, and Macs are much too "User Friendly" to properly "fix" in this manner.)
Hopefully this is coming off as humerous and not offensive, both of which I am capable of in a somewhat unpredictable manner, but in all actuality, it's probably just me rambling...
Re:1200 laptops could be a big problem (Score:2, Insightful)
30x40 meters doesn't sound like an unusually large gym. (Soccer fields are quite a bit larger than 30x40.) University gymnasiums can generally hold more than 1200 spectators, not even including the playing areas.
I'd be very surprised if they hadn't considered power requirements. Part of the experiment might be to see how long the "supercomputer" can run on its own batteries, though for logistical ("cat-herding") reasons that's likely to fail -- half the nodes will be out of juice before the other half are ready to start. Most likely they really do have 600 amps available in the facility.
Re:Wicked. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fly in the Ointment? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are so worried just remove the HDD from the machine you take, and you won't have any problems?
Usefullness? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've seen this sort of thing happen before: people devoting energy and money to what amounts to a technical fetish. The end state is a world where people like Robert G. Brown build themselves home beowulf clusters with no discernible purpose. (RGB: you're a nice guy and all, but I find it hard to believe that you need all that horsepower for personal use).
I'd rather see an article about broadband users organising themselves into a GLOBUS grid. For that matter, I'd like to see a comprehensive system for bug tracking MPICH (I've seen some weird bugs there). There's lots of things I'd like to see written about or developed. Tomorrows 'infinity + 1' Supercluster ain't it.
Re:New York Times Random Login Generator (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you! That's some great thinking on your part!
Re:Tough one to call... (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, it doesn't seem like all that serious an enterprise. Good luck to them, and if they have fun, hey all the better.
Stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
From flashmobcomputing.org: "Today, supercomputing is controlled largely by governmental organizations, academic research institutions, animation studios, and recently human genome companies. This means that the problems that get solved by supercomputers are narrow in scope and tightly controlled. We want to change that."
This is so stupid.
Besides, I don't think with 100Mbps interconnect their cluster will scale beyond performance of 32 P4 nodes with Myrinet...
Re:Wicked. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an old idea - it's called bootlegging, and with a few notable exceptions, almost all record labels oppose it. Think about it - this idea would be much cheaper and easier to implement if they just offered to send you a CD later and took $5 and a postal address at the T-shirt stall. Plus, they would get revenue from all the non-ipod owners as well, and could fix the parts where the vocalist sings out of tune.
So who's the idiot?
It's all about the latency... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe it's possible, but I think it would require a pretty creative network topology and some pretty clever re-structuring of the linpack benchmark (which is allowed by the Top 500 list rules, BTW).
Re:I'm there! (Score:5, Insightful)
You've either never been to a significantly large LAN party or are incredibly lucky. Getting x,000 randomly selected laptops to even all communicate together properly for the benchmark will be a major undertaking, nevermind doing any useful work in the amount of time allotted. The planners give the impression of being quite organized with their pre-made Knoppix disks but I assure you there will be something to gum up the works. This leads to a whole new discussion of why can't PC's be plug-n-go appliances after 20+ years, but nevermind that now...
how is this a flash mob? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The first time ... NOT (Score:4, Insightful)