FlashMob I

• In April 2004, the University of San Francisco hosted the first Flash Mob Computing computer; FlashMob I, with the purpose of creating one of the fastest supercomputers on the planet. A FlashMob supercomputer was created by connecting a large number of computers via a high-speed LAN, to work together as a single supercomputer.
• A FlashMob computer, unlike an ordinary cluster, is temporary and organized ad hoc for the purpose of working on a single problem. It used volunteers and ordinary laptop PCs, and was designed to allow anyone to create a supercomputer in a matter of hours.
• Over 700 computers came into the gym and they were able to hook up 669 to the network. The best Linpack result was a peak rate of 180 Gflops using 256 computers; however, a node failed 75% through the computation. The best completed result was 77 Gflops using 150 computers. The biggest challenge was identifying flaky computers and determining the best configuration for running the benchmark. Each of the 669 computers ran Linpack at some point in the day.