George Files

Woo hoo! India has the 4th fastest supercomputer - EKA

Well, would you look at that! EKA is in the 4th place among the top 10 supercomputers today. Fascinating! Tata Sons must be using this fellow to add up all their earnings. Well actually, they claim they will use it for earthquake and tsunami modelling, but I’ve read elsewhere that they’ll be doing digital animation and rendering on it. All that power and all we’re going to get is Hanuman all over again?! DO NOT WANT! Also, all that money/energy spent on getting this cluster of 64-bit Xeon processors was apparently a bit too much for the Computational Research Laboratories team because their website seems to be from 1995.

I was just thinking about this the other day actually. One rack of IBM’s Blue Gene/L costs about Rs. 8 crores, and a 16 rack configuration can put out 70 teraflops. That was then, prices have fallen now. Anyway, this HP cluster cost them around 117 crores. I’d like to see what they’re going to do with all that power. They’ve called this Eka, so will there be a Dvi then?

Yes, life goes on, but I didn’t think anyone in India had a need for a supercomputer after good old Param fell off the rankings once other machines started processing at more than a teraflop. Ah good times, good times.

Oh and yes it runs Linux, and I did imagine a Beowulf cluster of those

UPDATE: I just read the BBC News article on EKA and according to them:

The system will be initially targeted at developing applications such as neural, molecular and crash simulations, and digital media animation and rendering.

“The supercomputer system will have a direct affect on the lives of Indians, espcially in areas such as earthquake and Tsunami modelling, modellings of the economy and potential for drug design,” said Mr S. Ramadorai, chairman of the Computational Research Laboratories.

Well, would you look at that? They’re going to be using it to play the stock market! :D

Posted by roshan.george under Tech |