India Plans A Supercomputing Grid
An Anonymous Coward writes: "According to this article at CNET, India is building a country-wide High Speed Network. Named the "I-Grid" (I is for 'Information' silly !), its a feat for the Indians who have been bogged down by U.S. sanctions in the recent past -- besides, with a country as big as theirs, its one helluva project!"
Shouldn't roads and irrigation be more important. Hospitals. Schools.
There is no doubt in my mind that India is the next big superpower.
(1) Lots of unspoilt natural resources
(2) Smart People
(3) Most Important (A LOT OF PEOPLE)
(4) and it doesn't hurt they speak english allowing them to segue their way in.
My premise..? Numbers don't lie. A giant market is a giant period. This prediction does cover China too, their population makes them a sleeping giant. Except that China does not have an open society. India is struggling against years of exploitation and it's own caste system... but given the adoption of democracy there I can't imagine it won't arrise from these difficulties and when it does, it will have more resources than anyone will be able to (or want to) stop.
-pyrrho
From what I understand this will be a large project to interconnect India's largest technical colleges (Institutes of Technology, which are very prestegious and good) and have smallish (by US standards) supercomputers at each one. They would then resell the pooled computing resources as needed.
The American equivalent would be having a supercomputer at Stanford, MIT, UMich, CMU, GATech, and maybe 4 other places, connected via internet2 and ssh tunnels.
It is interesting to note that here in the UK, the laws for immigration have changed significantly. Laws are getting tougher for assylum seekers but being relaxed for immigrants that would help the UK economy... and many of these are Indians because they are smart and well educated. Indeed, I have heard of many a project that have been outsourced to India because skilled labour is so much cheaper there. India have the skills and manpower to pull this off
And remember different countries have different costs of living. Where I live, I can buy a very decent meal for less than 1 dollar. If I decide to cook my own meal, that figure drops to less than 50 cents. So don't be silly. Maybe those people do earn less than a dollar a day, but if they have how to grow their own crops, they may be doing relatively fine. Maybe their generation is "lost" in a sense, but if their children go to quality public schools, you should expect a totally different picture in less than a generation.
So, don't tell me about money. Tell me about schools, hospitals and information.