Narayanan Madhavan
BANGALORE: Once stymied by US sanctions but now aided by fast communications
links, India's state-run agency for advanced computing plans to build a
nationwide grid of supercomputers for mammoth applications.
Such a grid would share or combine diverse computer memories and software in
parallel processes to aid environmental modelling, fast analysis of satellite
images, advanced chip design and simulation of heavy-duty equipment like
turbines.
Supercomputers can also be used for complex crunching of capital market
derivatives and data, officials say. "Increasingly, there is a need for
people to access high performance computing than own it," R K Arora,
executive director of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC),
told Reuters in an interview late on Monday.
"We are going to get into developing in India what we call an I-Grid
(information grid)," he said. The building of the grid would coincide with
India's 10th five-year development plan starting in April, but the financial
details have not been worked out yet, he said.
Founded in 1988, C-DAC faced more than a decade of technology export
restrictions by the United States, particularly relating to the Cray
supercomputer, on the grounds that India might put the technology to military
use. The curbs are now off.
Braving the sanctions, C-DAC has built four versions of its Param series of
machines, putting India in an elite club of supercomputing nations like the
United States, Japan, Israel and China.
The latest Param crunches numbers at a speed of 100 gigaflops, or 100 billion
floating point operations per second. That put its among the world's high
performers, although the United States has developed machines 10 times faster, a
feat C-DAC is trying to match.
Napster for adults?
C-DAC's computers, built on a sophisticated clustering of microprocessors,
would use advanced software to securely network the machines, much like a
high-voltage electricity grid.
As a concept, it would resemble the popular Napster peer-to-peer file sharing
system used to swap songs over the Internet, but its scale would be humongous
and its design intricate, Arora said.
The grid could also power bioinformatics, an emerging area aimed at using
software to decipher voluminous data following the mapping of the human gene.
Arora said about 20 gigabits of genetic data were being added every day.
C-DAC, based in the western city of Pune, plans to link the seven prestigious
Indian institutes of technology (IITs), the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of
Science and other academic institutions in the I-Grid, Arora said.
Arora said C-DAC was better placed after the ending of US sanctions but
continued to believe that high performance computing was an important strategic
resource for India. "There have been denials (of technology) and there
shall be denials. You never know when there is yes and when no," he said.
About 250 of C-DAC'S 600-strong staff are involved in supercomputing and the
aim is to increasingly drive research and development through a successful
economic model, Arora said. Besides using its supercomputers for commercial work
like oil exploration, C-DAC also earns revenue from selling Indian regional
language software and by training high-tech engineers.
Revenue in the current year to March is expected to be in excess of Rs 850
million ($17.5 million), up from Rs 750 million last year, Arora said. About 75
per cent of C-DAC's budget comes from internal resources.