On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, shany pozin wrote: > > http://www.flashmobcomputing.org/ > > Can't our community do that also ? > > > Shany
It sounds like a pyramid scheme. The main incentive they give for participating in the Flashmob, is being able to decide what the supercomputer will be used for. But this only implies to the people who set the flashmob cluster up, namely the organizers. In other words, they might have some problem they want a supercomputer for, so they organize many people to bring they PCs and go through a lot of hussle, in order to temporarily donate they CPUs. I searched their site for what they will run in this first time they create the cluster, and could not find it, so it might be anything, including cracking. The people who donate their CPUs certainly do not get a say this time. Another aspect, is that they claim that the flashmob cluster will be a lot cheaper (in housing etc.) than other super computers, for example the recent Apple Supercomputer at Virginia Tech. But where do they intend to save, except in the costs of the computers themselves, which people bring? Regular PCs need air conditioners just as much as "real clusters", and even more, because they were not built to be stacked together. Will all those computers just heat, without air conditioning? How about network? The famous Virginia Tech cluster has Mellanox networking (Infiniband, Israelli company, BTW). This means they have really fast communication. They do not say anything about installing expensive network cards in the computers - actually, they talk of hubs, and not even on switches. Regular network cards are usually 10-100 ethernet. If you really want to make it into the top 500 of the supercomputers, you must have more serious network means. Here goes the other incentive they supply. In short, I would not bother bringing my PC to a flashmob. Orna. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
