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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.'"

7 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Or by rackserverdeals · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    --
    Dual Opteron < $600
    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:Or by dzfoo · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's true mostly for data centers in Florida.

              -dZ.

      --
      Carol vs. Ghost
      ...Can you save Christmas?
  2. Um... by FrameRotBlues · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Isn't this how it was done back in the day, with supercomputer time "leased" to companies who needed it?

    My uncle used to work for Minnesota Supercomputer Center and that's how he explained it to me; seemed pretty simple to my 12-year-old mind back then.

  3. Nothing new to see here by TheCycoONE · · Score: 4, Informative

    The idea is very old, and contrary to the article there are plenty of people offering similar services: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Rent-Your-Own-Supercomputer-for-2-77-per-Hour-82166.shtml, http://www.hoise.com/primeur/00/articles/weekly/AE-PR-04-00-20.html, http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/4590/2/, etc.

    Is their offering cheaper? Unfortunately the article didn't tell us.

  4. 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?

  5. Not only not new - it never went away by Brett+Buck · · Score: 4, Informative

    Its not only nothing new, we never stopped renting high-performance computing time. In some cases, it's ancient supercomputers that aren't all that super any more, but that the applications are so large and difficult to port to other machines, we just kept using them.

          Brett