India unveils new supercomputer
Published: 02 Apr 2003 08:44 BST
India joined the ranks of the US, Japan and China in the quest for high-performance computing this week with the launch of its latest domestic supercomputer.
The PARAM Padma computer was developed by India's Center for Development of Advanced Computer (C-DAC) and promises processing speeds of up to one teraflop per second, a tenfold increase over the country's previous supercomputer, reported Reuters.
This launch marks a step towards creating a grid of supercomputers to handle heavy-duty applications, such as weather forecasting and bioinformatics, C-DAC officials were quoted as saying.
The new machine uses IBM's Power4 processors and runs both the open-source Linux and AIX, Big Blue's version of the Unix operating system.
The AIX version supports 248 processors each, while the Linux version supports only 32 processors, due to inherent limits in the operating system, according to other reports.
C-DAC has built four versions of its PARAM supercomputer and is looking to export, said the report.
While the PARAM represents a major technological leap in India, its performance pales in comparison to supercomputers from China, US and Japan.
Last month, China unveiled the Dawning 4000L, a machine which offers 3 teraflops of computing power for scientific and other types of information processing. It houses 644 Intel processors, 644GB of memory and 100 terabytes of storage.
High-performance computers from Japanese and US-based companies boast of even more impressive hardware arsenals. NEC's Earth Simulator supercomputer consists of over 5,200 processors and 40 teraflops of power. IBM's upcoming Blue Gene supercomputers will boast 65,000 processors.
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