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India's First Commercial Supercomputer Running Linux
RuntimeError writes "It says
here
in Times of India that a gentleman in Bangalore, India has created the country's first commercial supercomputer based on the Linux operating system."
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CP
First the bomb and now a supercomputer! Looks like India is on the "to watch" list of the next few years. What are they going to name their version of linux? I think China's RedFlag Linux is pretty cool sounding!
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It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
Seems like the good publicity linux has been getting with stories like this is just not going to end. Everytime I turn around, there is another positive story involving linux and some new hardware.
And boy, would I like a beowulf clus....nevermind, too easy.
Finkployd
This is great news!
One area where Linux really can make a change is for computing in developing countries. Ok, this was a supercomputer, and the main cost here is probably hardware related.
However, in the more general case Linux has a real advantage because it is free. First, buying a commercial OS with source code is likely to be VERY expensive. Linux, free in both senses of the word, on the other hand, comes with the complete source ready for tweaking.
Another good thing about Linux is that it runs on cheap hardware, which I would believe to be good for developing countries. You'd get a lot of 486:s for the price of one Athlon-blabla mhz computer.
So hopefully Linux will make the world smaller and more accessible for people without the material wealth of western europe / USA.
// Simon Kågström
Beowulf Cluster!
_________________________
If you look at peacock systems website, you will see a quote that says that linux has a 61% server market share in the united states... while I am a big linux advocate and all, where the hell is he getting this number? while at the company I work (and the companies where most of my friends work) most of the servers have been turned into linux boxen, i know for a fact that the rest of the not quite so enlightened world hasn't made the switch over to linux land... ideas on where this came from?
"... operates on the easy-to-learn Linux technology."
"THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT"-Death
42
What's cool about Beowulf is that it lets non-US countries have access to supercomputers that they otherwise could not buy from the US. There are still significant restrictions in place that prevent many companies and governments outside of the US from buying high-end computers.
/. article last year mentioned that Clinton had raised the limit on what's considered a supercomputer (so today's standard microprocessors can be sold), but it's still a problem.
A
Yes, Japanense companies (Fujitsu, Hitachi) make some very good supercomputers too. But my point is that places that want to have world-class supercomputers (at least the type that Beowulf offers) can now do so without needing to dance with US commerce restrictions to buy from SGI/CRAY, IBM, Compaq/Digital or HP.
For the Top 500 supercomputers in the world, see top500.org.
"What Jayachandra has developed with help of a band of committed computer professionals -- who have had extensive Linux training in the US for about 10 years -- operates on the easy-to-learn Linux technology."
:)
10 years of "extensive Linux training" huh? 10 YEARS?!? They've also got 12 years of programming skills with Java, and 9 years experence using Windows 2000....
And, how come India has the "easy-to-learn Linux technology", but i'm stuck with this non-so-easy distrubution....
(OK, I'll stop now, this is humour though, don't get too upset
Can't help but laughing a bit about the "10 years of Linux training those computer specialists have received"
-- Andreas
If I get this right, 10 Lakh Rs == 100,000 Rs ~= $2300. So how powerful is this machine touted as a supercomputer? Anyone see a product pointer with further specifications?
-- ie an Indian citizen who lives abroad. This gaffe is
hilarious. If you don't know, ask.
I believe there are some Beowulfs running in some research
institute. This guy has slapped together some boxes and
plans to sell them. Maybe he'll do well, maybe not.
I hope they spend some of the money they save on education and sanitation.
Even if you managed to get a 386 and VGA monitor, built your desk out of mud you've still got a long wait until you can afford to have electric installed.
As for security for some places the first item on the tick list is a front door never mind a firewall!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Is it Indias first supercomputer, which runs linux or Indias first supercomputer to run linux. The /. title is and working in the article is not clear and could be misleading.
Well when Beowolf was temporarily banned in 1998 for fear of it being used to develop nuclear weapons in India, who would have thought that 2 years later we'd be reading about it in a positive article. NASA even deleted the home page for beowolf and we had a college student ftp server uprising much like the DVD uprising of 1999. It's good to see that what was once a security threat is now a triumph. Or maybe the columnist wasn't around in 1998.
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First NRI!= National Reserach Insititute. NRI= Non-Resident Indian ! :0
.. "India's First Commercial Supercomputer Runs Linux" is a misleading headline ! "Peacock" and "Maya" is NOT the first commercial supercomputer built by India. India had built 'Param' when India was denied access to Cray computers. It is an establised fact among the supercomputing people that 'Param' is giving Cray a real run for the money. Refer http://www.cdac.org.in/ for more details on 'Param'
Second
Yup, peacock and Maya is definetely the first linux-based supercomputer that Indian has built.
... "follow me" the wise man said, but he walked behind
wow,
this amazes me. It shows how great linux can really be, and the potential of it's future.
-----just my opinion
``We bought some of the components on Subedar Chatram Road,'' he says, half in jest.
hahaha,ha, er, he, um...
Ah the joys of the foreign (to me) press, these folks obviously don't know the power of the word Beowulf. Not one mention in the whole story AND it would finally be on-topic. Anybody around here mention Total Wo, err, keep hacking.
+&x
Industry sources say the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is making a supercomputer in which research organisations of the defence ministry are showing a keen interest.
Just a small comment in the article, that just doesn't make me happy, espescially considering the recent tensions between India and Pakistan.
Considering the rivalry between the two countries, we just have to wait for the announcement that Pakistan has a slightly better super-computer. But seriously, with knowledge spreading I expect that very soon we will see several 'third world' countries operating low-cost supercomputers for good and bad.
Use Adsense for Charity
We are working on reaching Linux to the 90% of the population who do not speak or understand English. Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. The Indian Linux Project
Prakash
FreeOS.com - The resource center for free operating systems.
So unless they are running exteremely parallizable
problems what good is it?
I believe this guy is just trying to get onto the linux bandwagon. Bewoulf clusters have been done before in India in research institutes like IISc Bangalore and India's PARAM computers based on a self-developed OS and Sun Sparc CPUs and have been exported by India to several other countries including Russia and in Europe. The overuse of hyperbole in the article suggests that the writer of the article is not too-computer literate. What this guy is just going to do is build Bewoulf clusters and sell them just like VA Linux does. He has done a very good job of getting the publicity and marketing though.
Well, Linux isn't exactly Unix, but perhaps what they mean is 10 years of UNIX experience, with a lot of Linux specific training in the past few years. I find that about 90% of my Unix experience transferrs directly over to working on Linux, though there are plenty of quirks to re-learn, and a heck of a lot of new technology to keep up with.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
From what I've observed over the past 4-5 years. Linux has become very strong in the cream of educational institutions and research labs in India, where access to source code is considered a plus, and people are smart enough to make good use of the source. Walk around in the IIT's, IISc, and exclusive Engineering colleges, and you'll know what I mean. on the other hand, Windows is very strong in the thousands of "Computer Institutes" where every Ram, Rahim and Ranjeet can spend 2 weeks & become a "computer professional". So if you meet an Indian who claims to be a "computer professional", ask him how familiar he is with linux. That should give you an idea about where he comes from... In any case, kudos to the folks who built the beowulf cluster. I'm surprised India has been so slow in following China's lead. After all, how long will they continue to use software that has backdoors to allow others access to information...?
Well the problem is that not everyone is good enough to get into IIT, IISc or `good' engineering colleges. OTOH, anyone with a few bucks on him can join a computer institute and become a computer professional. A few years ago - around 1994, some computer institutes had slackware linux installed as a free substitute for UNIX. No idea what happened after that.
At least at IIT Bombay, there is just one lab with windows machines. All other labs - 13 in the computer department, not to mention at least two in every other department run some kind of unix. most departments would run on linux, while SunOS is also used.
Linux has also in use at several geek homes. Early in 1996, a computer magazine put slackware linux on the CD that came with the mag. That is what started most of us out on linux. The supercomputer is only one more step in a large move of computerisation.
- self taught, but now in a `good' engineering college
Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
The point is that it's the first "LINUX BASED SUPERCOMPUTER", not the FIRST SUPERCOMPUTER.
A rather big difference, I'd say.
India has supercomputers. They made them themselves. They aren't stupid.
Oh frabjuos joy... He built a supercomputer.
Hasn't anyone else read Clarke. MMI MMX MMLXI MMMI
JimB
Here is an excerpt:
"It currently houses C-DAC's latest PARAM 10000, the most powerful supercomputer in India having a peak computing power of 100 GFlop with an architecture scalable to Teraflop range. C-DAC has advented the OpenFrame Architecture for scalable & flexible High Performance Computing unifying the well known NOW (Network of Workstations), COW (Cluster of Workstations) and MPP (Massively Parallel processor) architectures. This architecture has been realized in C-DAC's new PARAM 10000 series supercomputers, which are scalable from the desktop to teraflop range. The OpenFrame architecture of PARAM 10000 also realizes the server consolidation architecture required for building general-purpose High Performance Computing facilities.
The PARAM 10000 series of machines are powered by state-of-the-art and emergent SUN's UltraSparc series of Servers/Workstations configured as Compute nodes, File Servers, Graphics nodes and Internet Server nodes. These nodes are interconnected through PARAMNet a high bandwidth, low latency network designed in-house and a choice of other high performance networks such as Myrinet, Gigabit, Fast Ethernet and ATM."
Sorry for pasting a long part... but the website goes down quite often, and I wanted everyone to know.
Is there a formal definition of "supercomputer" out there? In my mind, I equate supercomputer with mainframe, which kinda messes with this article. Anyone got a good definition?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
well, i want to add here that Linux is used not only in the top engineering institutes, but also in the top managemnet institutes. i am studying in the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode, (IIM) and our intranet and web servers are linux based (RH 6 & 6.1 ).
It is interesting that the article talks about "India's first supercomputer to run Linux" and the Slashdot headline comes to read that India's first supercomputer is Linux-based.
Joy joy feelings to you, comrade Roblimo, for the double-plus good mindthink.
What Jayachandra has developed with help of a band of committed computer professionals -- who have had extensive Linux training in the US for about 10 years -- operates on the easy-to-learn Linux technology.
Hmm... methinks there is something a little askew here
Ever used QNX Photon microGUI? Damn fast on a 286! Get the demo disk, it has a full graphical OS and web-borswer in 1.4 megs... qnx.com
BTW, this is not completely a joke, since a big problem with supercomputers is that since they can chew on data faster than anything else, they need to be fed with large amounts of data at very high rates.
Yumpee
Ahhh Myrinet, the choice for a Quaking generation.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
"developed in India"? *sigh*
"who have had extensive Linux training in the US for about 10 years" Wow, this is impressive! So Linus DID'NT release Linux in 1991! The Indians knew of it in great detail before then! Or have they also developed time travel?
"Linux is a 32-bit multi-tasking, multi-user operating system" Whoops, better tell everyone using Linux on 286's and Alpha's that their computing lives do not actually exist. As Linux is a 32bit OS.
I support a local educational institute, can I set up all the classrooms (hundreds of PII 300's and up) to be a Beowulf cluster for the after hours? Can I get this kind of "computer guru" recognition after obtaining a Beowulf CD from Red Hat and installing it? And then sell a bunch of rack mount PC's for a crazy mark up? Will that make me an innovator like Bill Gates?
sigh.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
Jealous, yes and no I guess.
.oO0Oo.
India is a beautful country. Of all the places I have visited it has left me with the most indelible of impressions.
The abject poverty I witnessed really rocked my young world (I was 16 on my first visit) and gave my a humilty I carry everywhere.
Like most governments hooked on GDP they fail the people that need the most help. I'm jealous I don't live their with all my trappings of technostuff.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
For 4 nodes, it's probably cheaper (and definatly faster) to use a full fabric. That is, each machine has 3 NICs installed with crossover cables to the other 3 machines. It will definatly up the inter-node bandwidth over that of the best switches.
To expand to eight nodes, the same setup is used with simple routing and a cube shaped layout. For 16, you'll need 4 NICs per node and a hypercube layout (and it's still the best bang for the buck!). If you scale larger than that, you'll have to get creative.
sjames posting anon since this is off topic
Here are some of the reasons that I think India may have choosen Linux as opposed to Windoze.
1.) Open source - This allows India to ensure that there are NO backdoors to allow the United States or other countries to snoop into what they are using the machines for. It also allows for them to custom develop the OS into something that is more benificial to their needs.
2.) Free - Not that this is a big deal with something on such a scale. But, it may be a factor in major clustors as opposed to licensing something like Windoze NT.
3.) No licensing - I think this is the term I'm looking for. What I am trying to say here is that, India may import/export any system running this OS regardless of what anyone says since it has no owner per say.
4.) GLOBAL development force - Humans from around the WORLD are constantly working on this popular OS. No matter what day, what time, or what location, there are at any given moment, hundreds if not thouhsands of people working on improving and fixing Linux!!!
5.) Not owned by a US company - Dispite popular beliefs, the U.S. is not liked by everyone. By buying into a company like Microsloth, you in fact helping the economy of the country you may hate, which in turn helps them control your country further.
Well, I guess those are the main reasons that I can think of right now. Feel free to add other perhaps more technical reasons to the list (ie: process programming as opposed to threading....etc)
l8r
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Redundant on post number 1? Redundant? Said before?
Ummm, maybe redundant should not be an option for moderating post 1, ya think?