CHENNAI, INDIA: The Institute of Mathematical Sciences(IMSC) is open to provide access to its new supercomputer Annapurnafor use of other research organisations.

"After meeting our needs if there exist free computertime we may offer access to other research institution needing such highperformance computing," Gautam Menon, a professor at the IMSC, told IANS.

The Rs..6 crore ($1.3 million) high performance computationalcluster, supplied by Silicon Graphics International in the US, wasinaugurated Friday by Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy and Atomic EnergyCommission (AEC) chairman Srikumar Banerjee here.

Annapurna is afactory-integrated computational cluster, with 1024 cores

of Intel Nehalem 2.93 GHz chips, 1.5 tera byte (TB) memoryand storage of 30 TB.

According to Menon, with a peak speed of 12 teraflops (TF)Annapurna is currently the seventh fastest high performance computing machinein India.

A teraflop is computing speed equal to one trillionfloating-point operations per second. Each floating-point operation involves anumber with decimal points, as for example 3.22. These operations take longerto execute than number without decimals.

Among broad-based scientific institutions in India, the Annapurna cluster is the thirdfastest in India, rankingjust below the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Tata Institute of FundamentalResearch in Mumbai.

Menon said the supercomputer will be used by institutemembers working on condensed matter physics, lattice gauge theory,computational biology and complex systems research.

"This will enable our members and doctoral students topublish their papers in international scientific journals of greatrepute," Menon added.

He said the institute's early high computing performancemachines like Kabru, Vindhya and Aravalli are still in use. Kabru is part ofthe Garuda grid that links 45 institutions across 17 cities for nationwidecomputational nodes and mass storage, Menon said.

Earlier inaugurating the Annapurna cluster, Banerjee said India wassubject to technological embargo and was not able to get fast computationalsystems.

"There were limitations on processors. So differentinstitutes were asked to start work on this area," he said.

IMSC Director R.Balasubramanian thanked DAE for giving itssanction fast as the Annapurna project was notplanned at the beginning of the Eleventh Plan period and was decided onlymidway.