On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, Orna Agmon wrote: > 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 peopleto 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. i don't think. aparently they want to draw some attention: i haven't heard about the SF Uni much ...probably another mass media trick. but i am not reading much except manpages/docs lately.. [and i don't remember any man pages from SFU :) ] but the part "Mob" can show some nasty intentions ... > > The people who donate their CPUs certainly do not get a say this time. you are wrong, you get a T-shirt, it is a say: "I gave my computer into flashmob to calculate something.... not sure what it was... for `at least one student's tesis`.." > > 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? this is the point. i think what they really intend to do is finally start air conditioning at their uni: it is probably cold in there, so they bring up many pc's, make them calculate PI to 10^100000000000000000 digits, and in the meanwhile they have a fully air conditioned place... we think of air conditioning as of cooling... some people don't. usually clusters are specially designed to be less: noisy and volume-eating.. but regular PCs will be the oposite.. i think one might need a good shooting range hearing protection headset. > > 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. this is another point of heating. you probably haven't seen my 2nd remark when you wrote this.i think the hubs are intended to be coffee/cat heating points, since they all will be very hot. switches would be much colder. > > In short, I would not bother bringing my PC to a flashmob. > > Orna. i would neither. > > ================================================================= > 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] > > ================================================================= 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]
