Please Return Completed Applications To: Please Return Completed Application Form To: Fill & Download for Free

Yes, please send your FREE application along with $10 for processing, printing, and handling (along with a pre-paid self-addressed envelope) to our address below. Incomplete applications will not be processed. However, the processing fees cannot be returned.Complete and valid applicants will receive a $1 check by mail within 120 days.

There is an honorary French Consulate in Seattle, but it doesn’t look like you can apply on-site there either. However, here is a link to their address, number and email just in case you want to confirm with them. https://www.embassypages.com/missions/embassy13124/Now, there is an option that may be worth exploring. You can probably even ask them about it if you call.According to the French Consulate’s website, if you meet certain criteria you may be able to send your application to San Francisco and apply by mail.The following is from the French Consulate’s website (please see below): https://sanfrancisco.consulfrance.org/spip.php?article2673Not applying in person:If you already hold a Schengen visa bearing the mention "VIS" on it issued less than 5 years ago, you don’t have to apply in person (even if this visa is expired, or if it is in an old passport). In that case, you may apply by mail. Please mail us your completed application form along with a copy of all the supporting documents as indicated on the website.Your application documents shall also include :- a copy of your Schengen visa with the “VIS” mention- a credit card authorization form for the fees- a self-addressed prepaid envelope with a tracking number (from USPS OR FEDEX ONLY, with the mailing label fill out as indicated below).Please do NOT send us your green card a photocopy of it will do.Please note that “VIS-0” is different from “VIS” and is not eligible for this process.APPLICATIONS BY MAIL NOT MEETING THIS REQUIREMENT WILL BE RETURNED TO SENDER .FROM:YOUR NAME88 Kearny Street #600SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108TO:Your full nameYour addressGet Approved Schengen Visa Travel Insurance at G1G.com

I’m going to give a contrarian answer, so please bear with me.Years ago, I was at one of the several companies I’ve worked at that built supercomputer systems, and in discussing which computer was fastest with a colleague, he said, “Do you ever get the funny feeling that we’re actually just racing tricycles, and no one is noticing that… jet planes are roaring overhead?”So first, let’s talk about which tricycle is the fastest.The obvious thing to do is check the TOP500 ranking, see that the Tianhe 2 is in the #1 position and has been for quite some time, and there’s your answer. However, that ranking is based on a benchmark that has been out of date for about twenty years, that of solving a single gigantic system of linear equations where the system is fully populated with random numbers. I can count on one hand the number of actual applications that have a similar workload, so the ranking does not predict what you will get on a typical use case. Furthermore, the longer a benchmark lasts, the more vendors find ways to game the system, and that definitely has happened with the TOP500. This is called “benchmark rot.” I know, because I have had to design many systems for customers who cared only about the press release of their TOP500 ranking and not what would be the fastest choice for production supercomputing. The primary trick is to vastly overprovision the double-precision multiply-add capability relative to the memory speed, and then hand-tune the computational kernel of the TOP500 benchmark, which is one of the few kernels that tolerates that kind of imbalance.If I had a broad spectrum of technical applications to run and had to bet my life on picking the fastest production supercomputer, I would not pick the Tianhe 2. Or the next several machines on the TOP500 list. Most applications are limited by their memory speed, and those TOP500 winners have very imbalanced architectures with far more arithmetic speed than memory speed. I would go with the Blue Gene Q called “Sequoia” installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2011 and still in heavy use. That is an architecture that did not ignore the principles of balanced design, and as a result it sustains near-peak speed when running complete applications like simulating the electrophysiology of the human heart, compressible fluid dynamics, and cosmology models.Enough tricycle racing. Let’s talk about the jet planes roaring overhead. Here is what I think is arguably the fastest computer system in the world:Google.The collective computing power of all of Google’s servers is more than I can possibly imagine, and to paraphrase Han Solo, I can imagine quite a bit. This is a system that can search the 60 trillion web pages in existence and return an accurately-prioritized set of answers to a search query in a fraction of a second. That would be an incredible individual feat for, say, IBM’s Watson computer, the one that beat some very smart humans at Jeopardy.But Google’s does this feat 40,000 times per second. This takes heavy computing with a ranking algorithm that uses over 200 criteria and involves linear systems far larger than the ones used in the TOP500. And it is just a small slice of all the things Google’s equipment does. Some may protest, “But that’s not a computer! That’s a network of computers!”… Folks, all supercomputers are networks of computers, because that’s the only way to get high speed these days. They are all made of servers connected by switching networks.The total amount of hardware Google uses makes Tianhe 2 and Sequoia look like pocket calculators. I’m almost certain that Google’s network is the fastest supercomputer in existence, has been for years, and probably will continue to be in that position as long as the company remains successful.After Google, who would be second-fastest? Well, there’s the system that runs Facebook, and Yahoo, Apple’s cloud services… Microsoft has several computing centers the size of about 10 football fields that run Bing and other functions. There is no “TOP500” ranking for all these corporate systems because it is not in their business interest to advertise exactly how much hardware they have and how fast it is. But I suspect there are many at Google and these other companies who have to suppress a smirk when they witness the tricycle race that is the TOP500.