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Supercomputer As a Service

Posted by samzenpus on from the do-your-own-base-pair-matching dept.

gubm writes "Nearly one and a half years after making a stunning entry into the global supercomputer list with Eka, ranked as the fourth-fastest supercomputer in the world, Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), a Tata Sons' subsidiary, has succeeded in creating a new market for supercomputers — that of offering supercomputing power on rent to enterprises in India. For now, for want of a better word, let us call it 'Supercomputer as a Service.'"

5 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Or by Samschnooks · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Or, we could call it what everyone else is calling it. Grid computing or sometimes cloud computing.

    Or, we just call it what the old timers originally called it: time sharing.

    It fits. Just because it's over the internet as opposed to dedicated lines, I don't see why we need new terminology for basically the same thing.

  2. Re:Um... by A.+B3ttik · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's what we do at VT.

    Basically anyone, professor or student, commercial or non-profit, willing to fill out a sheet of paper can get Supercomputer Time. The damn thing is so fast that there's really nothing for it to do. It accomplishes every task very quickly, and ends up sitting around doing nothing half the time.

    I guess the difference is that people have to go to the facility to use it... they can't utilize it through a Web Service.

  3. In all seriousness by areusche · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Isn't this what the Storm botnet and the conflicker botnet are doing already? Say instead of storm doing something useful like fold proteins, find ET, or pull us out of this financial mess couldn't a person with a lot of money use the botnets for a useful purpose instead of spam or a denial of service attack?

    1. Re:In all seriousness by interkin3tic · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Ideally these guys renting the supercomputer are more trustworthy than the guys operating the botnets. Not a legal expert, so I'm honestly asking: if you give storm your money and they don't give you the services you pay for, what recourse do you have? Even if they were to, say, figure out the protein structure of your favorite protein, would they then just sell it to the highest bidder after you paid for it?

      Could be amusing, Pfizer pays Storm a million dollars to determine the structure of a receptor important for cancer, the structure is determined and posted to 4chan...

      I'd also wonder about the legal implications of giving NIH money or private investment money to whoever is operating Storm. Don't know if NIH themselves would know what the heck a botnet is, so maybe it's not currently against NIH funding rules, but I'd bet it would raise a few eyebrows.

  4. Re:Um... by Warlord88 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think its the only supercomputer in India. Hence the hype. I too think its natural for a supercomputer to give computing power on lease to others.