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Flash Mob Supercomputer?
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 sure the first thing on the minds of the people building this is whether they should buy client or server licenses from SCO.
(It's 4:20am and I don't have any coffee; I'm sure of a lot of things at the moment.)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Link
so, I'm going, obviously, but my big question is, beyond benchmarking, are we going to actually COMPUTE anything?
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
This doesn't sound like such a bad idea. seems like a lot of things could be done this way much faster and more efficiently. if this works we should look into other applications for the Flash Mob, like a rocket-building day for the X-Prize, or a random code-swap where a bunch of us get together and hand eachother a blank disc with the source code to something nifty on it to play with.
As a USF Student, I will be there with my laptop...All I have to say is GO DONS... The computer science department already has a cluster called the "keck cluster". Basically 64 nodes of dual P3 at 1GHz, with 1 Gig ECC Ram. There is talk about throwing the keck cluster into the flash mob cluster, but the biggest hurdle is appearntly laying the lines. Harney Science center is about 200 hundred yards from the gym where this is going to happen. And just FYI, they wanted it to be done on the 1st of april, but that didn't work out for some reason.
Maybe somebody should point out that is not the first time somebody has done such a thing... back in 1998 there was a quite similar event at the University of Paderborn where 512 normal home PCs brought by people were connected for one night (the event was even broadcasted live on German TV). I have to admit that the "flash mob" element here is more predominant (back then people knew about this two weeks in advance), but it's definitely not the first attempt to create a spontaneous supercomputer with home machines. The cluster even made it into the Top250 IIRC. :)
More info...
From the FlashMob FAQ:
"How do I setup my own flashmob supercomputer? First and foremost, if you can come to FlashMob I -- there's no substitute for first hand experience. Otherwise, start here and get some experience running a one node flashmob. Then run two. Then run ten. Then take over the world."
We're gonna to do it on your computer, then two computers, then ten computers, then your neighborhood. And then we're gonna do it at USF, then California, and then we'll take over the world! YEEEEEEAAARRRRGGHHH!!!
guys from the CLOWN '98 [http://www.tlachmann.de/linux-cluster/] already tried this (even it was not the main goal). it was a temporary cluster for only one night, but to get into top500 you have to build a durable cluster.
I have an idea as how to make Wifi hotspots economical. Imagine the Matrix meets Slashdot - in our wifi hotspot, imagine a network that sucks the living cycles from a beowulf cluster of you!
Here is the deal... to use a hotspot you have to download a package that connects your computer to the local "grid". In exchange for network access the grid gets your spare CPU cycles. The best hotspots could leverage the power of hundreds of notebooks, and then resell this on the market as a computing resource commodity, for multiplayer games, data crunching, whatever.
Though... I'm running a high fever and this is perhaps the fruit of a deranged mind.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The next logical step I think would be for a university to provide free internet in dorm rooms, as long as you leave your system on and run a distributed computing client for them. The student saves $$ without any noticable problems on their side, the university gets free computing time, seems like a win win situation.
Singer: Let me see your nodes!
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.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
I really think 1200 is overkill for this. Take a look at the Top500 list and see how badly all the Gigabit Ethernet systems scale: most of them have worse than 50% efficiency and that's with only 1/4 the number of nodes. Now cut the interconnect bandwidth by a factor of TEN, cause Apple is pretty much the only company putting Gig-E standard in their (pro) computers, and it seems to me that hundreds of people are going to be sent packing because adding them to the cluster would actually make it SLOWER.
Given how long this will take to set up, battery power isn't a viable option. Still, using a laptop is a pretty good idea. If you compare a laptop drawing 65 watts to a desktop drawing 300 at full CPU utilization, with a knoppix CD spinning at full speed, plus monitor power, you see that they gain nearly an order of magnitude in energy efficiency, though this is probably offset a bit by the lower clock speed on the laptop processors.
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.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
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.
You walk into the concert arena, your iPod2 uses zeroconf (rendezvous) to identify itself to the concert host system.
...
... now would be round about the right time to get into this market, since its infancy-stages ...
anyone whos' got the 'share my compute cycles' checkbox set on their ipod2 automatically shares their ipod2's cpu cycles, again announced by rendezvous, with the rest of the system.
for the duration of that gig, the machines are all bound together, beowulf-style, to distribute the live recording of the event that is being produced for prosperity during the concert. some 'secrets and surprises' are thrown into the tracks too, just for grins.
at the end of the gig, everyone walks away with their own digital recording of the event, custom, unique, 'branded to the event'.
the whole thing was included in the price of admission, and open to anyone who walks into the concert arena with their boxes turned on
I can totally see this happening. In fact, if I had the resources, I'd start a company that does just this service for concerts and gigs and such
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Interesting term "flash mob". The first time I encountered it was in the writing of sci-fi author, Larry Niven. In some of his series personal teleportation becomes ubiquitous giving rise to the 'flash mob'.
When a news broadcast reports a certain kind of story (riot, fire, etc) people start to teleport into watch the fun. The news reports the growing mob and before long it reaches critical mass and turns into a real riot as people take advantage by teleporting in and doing a quick bit of looting.
I'm not sure if Larry originated the term though ? Anyone know an ealier source ? Is it a 'real' phenomenon ?
Don't look back the lemmings are gaining on you
...except, the promoters normally don't want you walking out with a high quality digital recording of the event. If you did, you would be less inclined to buy music from them.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets