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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."

20 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. 61%? by ilkahn · · Score: 2

    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?

    1. Re:61%? by ilkahn · · Score: 2

      If you go to their website peacock you will notice it does not say: "linux currently has 61% of the webserver market" it says that linux has 61% of the server market. Those are two completely different things, even if linux were to have 61% of the webserver market, I know that in my office we have 4 machines that aren't dedicated webservers to the one dedicated webserver... so that number wouldn't mean all that much!

      their claim of 61% would mean that a large portion of the database servers, telephony servers, print servers, application servers, industrial control servers, would run linux! while I don't know for a fact that they don't, my guess is that Linux is nowhere near that number! i would love to be proven wrong, anyone have numbers to show me that I have made a mistake?

    2. Re:61%? by Abigail-II · · Score: 2
      You can always tell a M$ designed webpage because it has a grey background (the default in IE is white so they don't bother to set it).

      Gosh, I never knew the webpages I make using Linux were M$ designed. Believing that the reader knows best what his or her preferred background is, is an insight shared by more people than the ones on M$'s payroll.

      -- Abigail

  2. Linux avoids US export restrictions by gbnewby · · Score: 4

    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.

    A /. 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.

    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.

  3. Also experenced with time travel.... by Xenex · · Score: 5

    "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 :)

    1. Re:Also experenced with time travel.... by Signal+11 · · Score: 2

      They picked up bad habits learning those 12 years of Java - that's why they're having problems. Although I gotta wonder why it took 12 years to figure out what takes most people six months (and then another year trying to bury the painful memories..). Maybe they're really slow? Let's hope the system they built is faster than they are.. or it'll take about an eon to compile the kernel...

    2. Re:Also experenced with time travel.... by mindstrm · · Score: 2

      For *about* 10 years.
      Well.. I've been using it for 8.... and there were certainly a good sized handful of people using it before I was.
      I'm fairly sure I heard about it at least a year before that.. possibly more.

      Of course, I could go check some linux timeline before sticking my foot in my mouth....

  4. NRI != National Research Institute by rsidd · · Score: 4
    In India, NRI is a common abbreviation for "Non Resident Indian"
    -- 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.

  5. A bit misleading? by Hynman · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:A bit misleading? by ChaNakkya · · Score: 2

      I am sure the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in India came up with some supercomputers called 'Param's a few years back when the US Govt denied access to Crays. This is surely not the first indian supercomputer.

  6. Big surprise by heroine · · Score: 4

    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.

    1. Re:Big surprise by Wah · · Score: 2

      This could very easily become a "negative" article. All you need is a bit of FUD, Linux, Nukes, and Eastern Countries.

      --
      +&x
  7. Re:Supercomputer? How powerful is this machine? by rogerbo · · Score: 2

    You're missing a 0.

    One lakh is 100,000 Rupees. So 10 Lakh is $23,000 US.

    Thats enough to build a fairly impressive Beowulf cluster.

  8. Ok.. some clarifications by Manifest · · Score: 2

    First NRI!= National Reserach Insititute. NRI= Non-Resident Indian ! :0

    Second .. "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'

    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 ...
  9. ROTFL by Wah · · Score: 2

    ``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
  10. Frightening (slightly off-topic) by Raindeer · · Score: 2

    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.

  11. The Indian Linux Project by prakash · · Score: 2

    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.
  12. PARAM and Bewoulf by azeem_k · · Score: 3

    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.

    1. Re:PARAM and Bewoulf by shri · · Score: 3

      Yes, this is true. The Param has been out there for quite a while, running on a SPARC based architecture. This is just one more moron jumping on the Linux bandwagon. Having said this, hopefully it inspires some of the mainstream companies like Wipro etc to jump on and release Linux based platforms. Any publicity is good, however a note to the folks reading about Linux in India for the first time, be paitent, our reporters are just as bad as some of the folks on ZDNET when they began their Linux coverage. With Oracle, Sybase and IBM providing their enterprise class software on Linux, Linux should really be the platform of choice for training computer professionals and students in India. We need a major initiative in India funded by the private industry to take a look at developing Linux as an alternative platform by contributing Hindi and other language capabilities to the code base. I actually find it hard to NOT find a single sector in India which would not benefit from having Linux as the preffered or alternative platform of choice.

  13. Bad headline once again by mindstrm · · Score: 2

    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.