Ari Morgan and Harry Hsiao created an iPhone game for NCSA to simulate job scheduling on supercomputers.
Written by
Scientists and engineers keep supercomputers very busy simulating severe storms, galaxies, molecules, and more. Scheduling those jobs is like putting together a complex puzzle. Computer science students Ari Morgan and Harry Hsiao have created an iPhone/iPad game, Flops Fever, that emulates the activity.
Created at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Flops Fever can be downloaded free from the Apple app store. An Android version of the game will be coming soon.
Flops Fever, created by Illinois computer science students for NCSA
Flops Fever, created by Illinois computer science students for NCSA
To play the game, place the different types and sizes of science and engineering jobs on the available nodes of the supercomputer. If you're too slow, jobs will pile up in your queue and your supercomputer will be idle! Flops failure!
Can you juggle jobs and keep the flops count climbing, or will your queue explode?