ACADEMIA

The University of San Francisco hopes to create one of the world's fastest supercomputers. On April 3, students plan to assemble the first "FlashMob Supercomputer" by inviting 1,000 laptop owners to campus. Computer scientists will connect the laptops via a high-speed LAN to work together as a single supercomputer. USF students and faculty will run benchmarking software package on FlashMob 1 and will be submitted for inclusion in the Top 500 Supercomputer list. John Witchel, the graduate student who had the original idea of building a volunteer supercomputer, says he thinks flashmob computing will make it possible for groups to harness computer power now available only to large corporations or government laboratories. "If this experiment works, possibilities for future computer flashmobs are limitless, solving problems that otherwise would never be investigated because of the expense of supercomputers and their relative scarcity," said Greg Benson, assistant professor of computer science at the University of San Francisco and one of the project's co-creators. "We're trying to democratize supercomputing," Mr. Witchel said.