AUTOMOTIVE

A FlashMob supercomputer is created by connecting individual computers via a high-speed LAN to work together as a single supercomputer. A FlashMob supercomputer uses volunteers and ordinary laptop PC's to create a supercomputer in a matter of hours. USF students and faculty will run a well-known benchmarking software package on FlashMob 1 and the best benchmark will be submitted for inclusion in the Top 500 Supercomputers. What: Help create one of world's fastest supercomputers for a day and change the supercomputing paradigm forever. When: Saturday, April 3, 2004. Registration times will be staggered throughout the morning. Laptops must be available until 6 p.m. After 6 p.m., computer gaming will be offered. Where: University of San Francisco campus, Koret Gymnasium, corner of Parker Ave. and Turk St. Specs: Laptops must be at least 1.3 GHZ Pentium III/AMD equivalent or better with 256MB of RAM, a 100 Base-T network connection and a CD-ROM drive. Volunteers will be provided with a CD-ROM that contains an operating system, configuration, and the benchmarking software. It does not matter what your computer's current operating system is. Because the software boots from the CD-ROM and runs entirely from memory, your hard drive will never be touched. Once you register, you can download and ISO image of the CD-ROM before you arrive. Sign Up: You MUST REGISTER to participate. Please register for this historic event at www.flashmobcomputing.org "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 Dr. Greg Benson, assistant professor of computer science at the University of San Francisco and one of the project's co-creators. For more information, see www.flashmobcomputing.org. Or, call Gary McDonald, USF director of media relations, at 415-422-2699.