The Hindu : National : Fastest academic computer to vie for top spot

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 28, 2004

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National

Fastest academic computer to vie for top spot

By Anand Parthasarathy

The team at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences and (right) the Super Computer.

BANGALORE, APRIL 27. India's fastest academic computer — a `teraflop' Linux cluster — has been commissioned at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), in Chennai — and come June, will vie for a ranking in the global ``Top 500'' list of the world's fastest supercomputers.

The configuration was put together by a team of students and teachers of the institute led by N.D. Hari Dass, as well engineers from two Indian computer companies — Netweb Technologies from Delhi and the Mumbai-based Summation Enterprises and the two hardware suppliers, Supermicro and Dolphinics.

Stringing together 144 separate computers, based on dual Intel-Xeon processor chips and running the Open Source Redhat 8.0 version of Linux, the researchers managed to clock up a peak computing speed of 1.382 teraflops (that is 1,382 billion calculations per second). The sustained performance, which is the basis of ranking, was 951.7 gigaflops or 951 billion floating point operations, using the internationally accepted benchmarking programme called Linpack.

The cluster supercomputer — so called because it is really a cluster of hundreds of identical computers, rather than a single behemoth — was commissioned last week, with just two days to spare for the deadline to be considered for the Top 500 rating that will be announced at the International Supercomputer Conference, in Heidelberg, Germany, on June 22.

Its creators have named their supercomputer, Kabru, after one of the tall peaks as yet unclimbed, in the Himalayas, but not the tallest. Speaking to The Hindu Prof. Hari Dass explained that the machine would be used for the project: ``Indian Lattice Gauge Theory Initiative'' of the institute to simulate the properties of protons, neutrons and other fundamental particles.

He added: ``One of the great challenges in Theoretical Physics today is to understand what constitutes particles. It is believed that protons and neutrons are made up of what are called ``Quarks''. This is an exceptionally hard theory to do calculations in and Lattice Gauge Theory is a way of simulating this problem on computers. Most problems need months to years, even on teraflop-level supercomputers.''

The institute, an autonomous one doing fundamental research in frontier areas of mathematical sciences, is largely funded by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). It cooperates with the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai and the Kolkata-based Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) on the Lattice Gauge work. The DAE had made a grant of Rs. 3.5 crores to the institute out of which the Linux cluster was realised at a cost of about Rs. 2.5 crores — a fraction of what supercomputers of this pedigree would cost if one were to import it.

If it makes the climb to the Top 500, it will be the third India-based supercomputer in the list (www.top500.org/list/2003/11/) : The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC)-developed `Param Padma' entered the list a year ago at number 258 with a sustained 594.2 gigaflops (1132.8 gflops peak) while the chipmaker, Intel's Bangalore-based development centre reached the 105th rank with an IBM cluster based on its own Xeon processors clocking a sustained 1105.96 gigaflops (peak: 2755.2 gflops).

The world's fastest supercomputer since 2002 has been the Japanese NEC Earth Simulator at 35860 gigaflops (40960 gflops peak).

Details of the IMSc Chennai machine can be found at the web page currently under development: www.imsc.res.in/kabru/

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