Dated March 05, 2002
www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Once stymied by U.S. 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," Shri. R.K. Arora, Executive Director of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), said 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 (PARAM 10000) 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 humungous and its design intricate, Shri. 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. Shri. R.K. 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 Indian institutes of technology (IITs), the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science and other academic institutions in the I-Grid, Shri. Arora said.

Shri. R.K. Arora said C-DAC was better placed after the ending of U.S. 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, Shri. 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 850 million rupees ($17.5 million), up from 750 million rupees last year, Shri. Arora said. About 75 per cent of C-DAC's budget comes from internal resources.

More News >>