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India's First Commercial Supercomputer Running Linux

Posted by Roblimo on from the inevitable-advances dept.

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."

4 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  2. 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 :)

  3. 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.

  4. 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.