Supercomputing is Here!

Supercomputing or High Performance Computing (HPC), is
witnessing a growth momentum in India, thanks to lessening of restrictions and
easy availability of components (both hardware and software) to assemble a
supercomputer. This has resulted in increased demand for HPC in various sectors
of the industry, broadening the base of installing supercomputers in India,
which traditionally were confined to leading research and scientific
institutions.

All this is good news for global HPC vendors like HP, IBM, SGI,
Dell apart from some of the relatively new players like Wipro Infotech and HCL
Technologies. According to estimates, the domestic market for supercomputers is
presently more than $1 bn.

Going Back in Time

Due to restrictions put in place by the US government in the 1980s, the
import of components to assemble a supercomputer was a near impossibility as
most supercomputing vendors were primarily from the US. India wanted to import a
CRAY supercomputer, which was denied by the US government through a "Denial
List Parties". The reason was the United States fear that the components
might be used for military purposes. C-DAC spearheaded Indias capability to
independently develop supercomputers and all efforts resulted in the development
of the famed Param Padma, which put India on the global map.

That was then. Now, things have changed for the better. There is
no need to import components needed for assembling a supercomputer as they are
available in India. The only restriction applies to MNC vendors like HP and IBM
who have a list of names to whom they cannot supply. According to Viswanath
Ramaswamy, general manager, Projects, STG, IBM India/South Asia, "We have
come a long way on this issue. Today, organizations can go in for 600 or more
nodes without going in for any approvals. It is also due to the improvement in
the US and India relations."

Beyond R&D

An interesting development in India is that supercomputers have become more
mainstream. It is not confined to only research institutions any more as was the
case traditionally. According to Ramaswamy, "It is growing in multiple
segments. We see a decent growth in embedded design architecture and VLSI
design."

Ashutosh Vaidya, VP, Personal Computing Division, Wipro Infotech,
says, "Now it is possible for even an engineering college, present in
almost every district, to install a supercomputer. The prices are very
affordable and it can start from 8 nodes onward."

According to Faisal Paul, country manager, High Performance
Computing & Linux Business, Technology Solutions Group, HP India, "It
was a myth that HPC is only meant for research institutes. This was broken with
supercomputers being built with small building blocks". He also feels that
organizations dont need to earmark huge investment upfront. It can be done on
a piece-by-piece approach. Organizations can start small and as the business
grows, they can add more compute power to machines.

Global and Indian Landscape

According to Anand Babu, CTO of Z Research, a supercomputing company uses
software technology based on free software and "open standards" to
enable system integrators to deploy supercomputers, "Two things that have
revolutionized supercomputing and superstorage are free software movement and
clustered architecture-based hardware. In the past, supercomputers were
primarily on a proprietary technology and not affordable at all. Only national
labs could afford them. It was clustering of different machines to get more
compute power that really revolutionized it.

"It was the clustered architecture, the Linux kernel, and a
bunch of software that were developed to put together a loosely connected
machine together to run some scientific applications," adds Babu.

The myth that HPC is only
meant for research institutes was broken with supercomputers being built
with small building blocks

Now it is possible for
even an engineering college, present in almost every district, to install
a supercomputer

Faisal Paul, country
manager, HPC & Linux Business, Technology Solutions Group, HP India

Ashutosh Vaidya, VP,
Personal Computing Division

HP and IBM continue to be two of the leading supercomputing
vendors. According to the latest Top 500 list released recently, HP leads the
pack in terms of number of installations, having a share of 40.6%, while IBM is
way ahead of others in terms of performance and its share is 41.9%. This is
followed by HP, with 24.5%. In terms of processors for these 500 installations,
Intel has the majority share with 57.8%. IBMs Blue Gene/L (Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory) leads the pack with a performance of 280.6 Teraflops, or
trillions of floating point calculations per second.

Out of the 500 fastest supercomputers, eleven are installed in
India in various research institutions and companies, most of the names of which
have not been revealed due to confidentiality reasons. These are primarily IBM
and HP systems.

Vendor Strategy

Some of the vendors and system integrators who are bullish on HPC in India
include HP, IBM, SGI, apart from Wipro Infotech and HCL Technologies. Most of
the players have end-to-end solutions set and also help customers to manage them
after installations. HPs strategy for HPC is to service the market around
compute, storage, and visualization and integrating them together to give
computing performance over a high speed interconnect backbone.

IBM, on the other hand, has different solutions and packages for
the different segments. According to Ramaswamy of IBM, "We have addressed
every single segment starting from sixteen node to as high as 2,000 node
clusters."

According to Ashutosh Vaidya of Wipro Infotech, "Our job is
to make sure that the availability of HPC is known to people. Supercomputing and
super storage have become affordable in the last 3-4 years. The amount of
research that is happening has also increased tremendously, moving into a
different ball game. There is immense scope of utilizing brain power provided
that right tools are there."

Incidentally, Wipro Infotech recently launched its Wipro
Supernova range of supercomputers in exclusive partnership with the
California-based Z Research. This company helps system integrators with little
or no experience to build compute clusters, massive storage systems and
supercomputers using a clustered architecture.

The Outlook

HPC systems are becoming affordable, thanks to reduction in installation per
node. The availability of standard-based systems has also helped the
proliferation of HPC in India. All this means that chances of more entities
ranging from the computer science department of engineering colleges to
production houses, having access to supercomputers are high. There is a general
agreement among vendors that as and when the indo-US nuclear deal comes into
effect, chances of restrictions easing further would be very high. There is a
hope that organizations like the BARC and Nuclear Power Corporation, which are
still on the "Denied Parties List" have access to the supercomputers
from the open market.

Sudesh Prasad

sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in