India Plans To Build Fastest Supercomputer By 2017

First time accepted submitter darkstar019 writes "India is planning to build a computer that is going to be at least 61 times faster than the current fastest super computer, IBM Sequoia. Right now the most powerful supercomputer in India is 58th in the list of top 100 supercomputers. From the article: 'Telecom and IT Minister Kapil Sibal is understood to have written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sharing the roadmap to develop "petaflop and exaflop range of supercomputers" at an estimated cost of Rs 4,700 crore over 5 years.'"

Comments

Crore = 10^7

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore

Nice to see the editors making sensibly proof-read, accessibly written summaries, rather than the usual treasure hunt for the true meaning.

Re:Crore = 10^7

[nashv]

It's not that hard. The only difference being that the Indian system uses 10^ odd numbers, more often primes, as a reference.

And thus : 10^0,1,2,3,5,7 all have names - 10^5 being a lakh and 10^7 being a crore. A complete list is rather interesting, showing that the system predates Western mathematical formulations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_large_numbers and having pecularities like bodhisattva ( or ) —10^37218383881977644441306597687849648128.

You gotta ask...why 10^37218383881977644441306597687849648128?!

Re:Crore = 10^7

[Lobachevsky]

47 milliards rupees in a furlong squared datacenter. There, now it's in English.

Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

More dick waving.

Obsolescence

[Anonymous Coward]

The best part is by the time 2017 rolls around other countries would be doing the same so their fast computer turns out not to be THE FASTEST.

Re:Nonsense

[fustakrakich]

Heh, did you? This what you're looking for?

Considering Moore's law

[SpaghettiPattern]

Considering Moore's law that's just about to be expected.

In 5 years we have 3 x 18 month period. The level of improvement in hardware is multiplies by 2^3. Then I'd expect level of parallelism to affect the process by the same magnitude bringing the total to 2^6 = 64.

Re:Considering Moore's law

[tlhIngan]

Considering Moore's law that's just about to be expected.

In 5 years we have 3 x 18 month period. The level of improvement in hardware is multiplies by 2^3. Then I'd expect level of parallelism to affect the process by the same magnitude bringing the total to 2^6 = 64.

Except Moore's Law only indirectly applies. All it states is that the number of transistors you can squeeze doubles every 18 months or so.

Number of transistors only really is a passing indication of CPU power. Especially these days where the thing limiting the density of transistors is wiring them up - the "random logic" of a CPU is dominated by the wires that interconnect them together.

Moore's Law does however apply to the most transistor dense logic aorund - memory. Memory arrays (volatile and non-volatile) are basically controlled by how close you can pack them together, so every generation you can pack twice as much for twice the storage or make 'em half the price.

Re:Crores to USD

[Matheus]

You are correct sir. Although apparently since I was last there the value of the Rupee has fallen *severely so...

At current exchange R4,700 Crore ~= $87,231,060.00 USD.

For these 'fastest' metrics:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

How well do the 'fastness' metrics used to rank computers in e-peen order capture some of the messier variables of assorted cache speeds and sizes, latencies and throughputs of network interconnects, dubiously general; but very high speed for certain purposes GPU or fpga elements vs. generic CPUs, and so on?

Obviously, the people building these things to get work done have an incentive to make them actually useful; but is the benchmark itself much of a test of dreadful interconnect design or other serious issues, or could you just buy your way to a shiny spot at the top by shoving together enough gigE connected 1Us?

Re:For these 'fastest' metrics:

[serviscope_minor]

Depends on the test.

The classic LINPACK benchmark will stress most of the parts which will mean the result is a combination of raw FLOPS with memory bandwidth, cache and etc. LINPACK doesn't stress the interconnects particularly highly and is very regular. As a result, it tends to favour computers that have more FLOPS but cheaper interconnets.

That said, it's not terrible, which is why the computers also have the efficiency (theoretical peak FLOPS/actual flops) listed. Compare the Tinhae-1A computer which was heavy on GPUs versus with 46% efficiency the K computer which has lots of wide SIMD cores with a very tightly coupled interconnect which achieved 93%.

So even LINPACK which is generally considered as "too easy to be a useful test" still can distinguish between raw peak FLOPS and sustained performance.

In practice, some tasks will depend heavily on the interconnect. Others, like protein folding are so embarressingly parallel that the interconnect basically a non-issue which is why floding@home works.

IOW YMMV HTH HAND

Re:For these 'fastest' metrics:

[cwebster]

Modeling.

Weather modeling (solving navier-stokes and a few other equations on a discrete cartesian grid or on a spherical grid in spectral space). Add in land surface models, ocean models, data assimilation, chemical processes, and then crank the resolution way up and you need a lot of power.

DNS (direct numerical simulation) -- if you want to simulate a fluid flow with turbulence and you want to resolve the turbulence explicitly you need to have a grid spacing in your model that is smaller than the kolmogorov scale. For some flows this may produce a grid spacing measured in millimeters. If you want any decent sized model domain, this produces a lot of grid points.

Monte-carlo type simulations -- i.e., run a simple simulation but do it 1e50 times to amass a statistical representation of the process.

and lots of other types of modeling. Basically if you have a set of partial differential equations that tell us something and you need to solve them numerically (no analytic solutions, etc) and need to do it on very large domains at high resolution and your neighbor grid dependencies are such that your problem is parallel, then a supercomputer is for you.

Difference between 2007 and 2012 was only 34x grea

[Turboglh]

http://www.top500.org/lists/2007/11
http://www.top500.org/lists/2012/06
Should be interesting to see them double the rate of growth over the preceding five years

And there will be

[onyxruby]

One supercomputer to outsource them all

Re:Please it is a Joke

[hihihihi]

Our Minister Kapil, is a good comedian... Minister Kapil wont be there that long.

hey... celebrating world optimism day today are we?
you see, just like managers, these dickheads are expected to come up with "next big idea", spent a lot of money and move on. and that is what this is, just like the akash tablet project, the complete literacy project, remove proverty project and what not.

PARAM and beyond

[unixisc]

India's current supercomputer - one that it's developed since the 80s - is the PARAM, which has had 6 generations to date. The first was based on the Inmos Transputer, the second on an Intel i860, the third on a SuperSPARC II (and it even had an Alpha variant), the fourth on an UltraSPARC II, the fifth on an IBM POWER 4, and the most recent - unveiled in 2008 - was based on the Intel Xeon (Tigerton 73xx). They are currently working on one that's supposed to break the 1 petaflop barrier (that would be 10 crore crore flops for Indians). So this new announcement would be the successor to that.

So it's not like they're new @ this, and what is impressive is that they've used a wide variety of CPUs from different vendors. For this next one, they might want to do that w/ an Itanium III or a POWER7 (unless POWER8 is anywhere close). It would seem that for that, they might get some Intel/HP expertise to help w/ that. I have no idea how good they are @ writing compilers. But yeah, planning a supercomputer based on this CPU and tossing in enough of them should enable them to achieve that goal. Put Debian on it, and then use it for whatever they need - weather forecasting, nuclear simulations or whatever they want to use it for. A lot of the 52 PARAMs that they've manufactured & sold have been sold to other countries.

I just wish that aside from the Indian government, there were a few companies in India that made supercomputers.

Re:PARAM and beyond

[unixisc]

As the history part of the wiki link shows, India originally wanted to get Crays from the US, but couldn't due to a technology embargo by the US. Which actually was justified @ the time, given that India was one of the main technology partners of the Soviet Union and would voluntarily give them things that the KGB couldn't steal from the West (India originally wanted to buy this in the mid 80s). So it's not like they wanted it for dick waving rights - I doubt that any of the first 6 PARAMs were #1 @ any point in time. Weather forecasting was initially the main thing, followed by other things. The US was @ one time concerned about India's use of nuclear technology for making nukes, but in the last agreement b/w the 2, India agreed to separate out its military usage of nuclear technology from its commercial usage. In any case, since these are home grown supercomputers, India could well use a few for nuclear simulations, and there's nothing the US could do.

As for whether India should have nukes when it has the problem of poverty and related issues, India first lost a war against China in 1962 (started by the latter), and IIRC, China was either a nuclear power then, or became one since. India's initial interest in becoming a nuclear power happened as a result of that. Pakistan, in turn, decided to be one so that it could seize back Kashmir, and today is one, but they have been becoming increasingly extreme over the years since 9/11, and are a genuine threat to India. So India would be criminally negligient to its own people if it didn't put a few supercomputers out there to do the nuclear weapons simulations that they need to to ensure that it has a good deterrent. Of course, w/ an Islamic country, even that may not be a deterrent, but since not all Muslims have suicidal fantasies, having that has some likelihood that they'll never be used.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Nonsense

[1s44c]

AC,

  Moheeheeko raises a fair point. India right now is nothing like the US was in the 1950's and 1960's. India lacks basic infrastructure throughout a great deal of its country and it has poverty and slums the like of which most of the developed world would find hard to believe. Now knock the US for their rampant gun crime all you like but India as a whole is altogether more messed up.

And before you tell me I don't know what I'm talking about I spent enough time in India to know that all the Indian 'It used to be like that but it's better now' crowd are lying for the sake of national pride.

Re:Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

There's your problem. We don't use the metric system.

Mod parent troll

[fiannaFailMan]

You're responding to a post about a:

(*) Technical innovation in a developing country
( ) Product shipped to a developing market
( ) General discussion about IT in the devbeloping world

The location is:

( ) Africa
(*) India
( ) Bangladesh
( ) China
( ) Somewhere else in Asia
( ) South America
( ) Central America
( ) Other _unspecified_

You're objecting to it on the basis that:

(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in that country yet
( ) American jobs will be lost

Your argument is bogus because:

(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in the developed world either, that doesn't mean we should halt all technological research
(*) This will not adversely affect any efforts to alleviate poverty
(*) This will help to alleviate poverty
( ) Poverty in that country isn't as widespread as you say it is
( ) The US does not have a divine right to keep all the cool jobs

Re:Mod parent troll

[fiannaFailMan]

I believe the original post's argument was that India would be better served spending the money on basic infrastructure. While a supercomputer is great, it's not going to pay the same dividends that clean drinking water and reliable power would. Not only do those very basic utilities reduce healthcare costs, they are productivity multipliers and would benefit the Indian economy greatly.

*Rolleyes*

FFS sake would you people give it a fucking rest?!

What the hell is it about India that brings out the "social programs and public works are the answer to the country's problems" crowd who always seem to be skeptical of exactly that sort of spending when it comes to the USA? There are problems with basic infrastructure in England but I don't see anyone suggesting that their R&D budget should be slashed and the funds diverted to roads, hospitals, schools and all the other usual "think of the children" suspects!

Read my lips and listen very carefully because this bears repeating:

Investing in R&D is the best way to lift people out of poverty.
Investing in R&D is the best way to lift people out of poverty.
Investing in R&D is the best way to lift people out of poverty.
Investing in R&D is the best way to lift people out of poverty.
Investing in R&D is the best way to lift people out of poverty.

Capiche?

Re:IT minister in India built that

[fiannaFailMan]

The problem with India is, "India wants to do it". It is not the scientists or researchers in a university or institute in India who will do it, but a telecommunication minister. Till this mentality dissipates and the government bets on the independent institutions in India to come up with such headlines, India is going nowhere.

Yeah. As I sit here posting on the internet via the World Wide Web I have to ask, what innovations has government ever produced?

Re:Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally feel we should give them more guns. And battlefields. These thugs are soldiers for whatever their cause is. They're ready to kill and die for it. And the current laws aren't stopping them. So let them have it. Just make sure they're isolated so stray fire can't hit noncombatants. Maybe rent out Soldier field, the MetLife stadium, set up some concrete barriers and let them go nuts on each other. They get to do what they're going to do anyway, the public is safer, and we've got a new reality TV show that can be monetized and taxed. Nobody loses.

Re:Nonsense

[Moheeheeko]

They did that allready, its called Chicago.

Re:Nonsense

[hkrish4]

Wait Mr. GeekWithAKnife. I don't know who you are but this is worst insightful text one could type for this post. First delete your impression about India in your mind If(you==Indian){ I feel sorry about the fact that you didn't have clear idea about your nation.} else{ Don't judge India by movies. Visit India and live there and then see what is actually happening there. } Note:It is not the land of homeless people (There are lot of homeless in US but not in Canada). In India, there are about one third of the population who are in poverty. I accept that. But it doesn't mean that government has to keep pushing them up. Those are a third of population who never come up in life even if they are given options. Comparing the policies in India, policies in US doesn't seem quite fascinating to me.(I always had an impression that US would be much better in all terms when compared with India. But it is not as fascinating as it sounds like. There might be lot of things that great happening here). I have seen lot of comments that say like India should focus on poverty rather than these scientific experiments. What do u guys think you are? Marx? for record: I was born and brought up in India and came to US for my grad school (assuming that I can't make into prestigious institute in India. You know why I can't make to those institute bcoz of my caste. It is not easy like here. I have the highest gpa in univ but I can't continue bcoz they are giving opportunities to poor people than me. I did my undergraduate in scholarship and continuing my phd also in scholarship. ) I am successful in my career. I am competitive and very successful than I thought. The same poverty hits me and I am not rich. It's all how you think about yourself. It doesn't have to deal with any country. I had very strong conviction towards my goal. I came to US just because I thought I can do some research. If there is a supercomputer faster than sequoia that going to be there, I bet I will return. so does all Indians. Hope you heard of brain drain and brain gain. Soon that will be the case! P.S: I highly condemn this kind of comments like giving suggesstions that are merely stupid and never appreciating any effort by India.