TIFR, HP in pact to build supercomputer

The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research has announced a partnership with Hewlett Packard for setting up one of India's largest supercomputers, which will also include the rollout of the largest Itanium Linux cluster.

The two entities have come together to implement high performance computing solutions at TIFR's Computational Mathematics Laboratory in Pune.

This will enhance CML's ability to conduct world-class research in the area of computer science and mathematics by enabling it to run various complex algorithms with up to a billion variables.

This implementation also represents a growing importance of Linux based Industry Standard Architecture clusters with high bandwidth interconnect in high performance computing. The supercomputer includes 78 x 2-way Itanium nodes with a high performance Infiniband backbone.

"TIFR is very pleased to partner with HP - a global technology leader - for high-end research in the field of computational mathematics" said Narendra Karmarkar, head (CML), TIFR. "These technologies will help us in our research on the fundamental problems in mathematics and optimisation techniques. With the implementation of this Itanium cluster, we have reached yet another milestone in technology adoption to help scientific discoveries using world-class algorithmic research in computational mathematics."

"We are happy to partner with TIFR-a global leader in research to set up one of the most powerful supercomputers in India," said Pallab Talukdar, director, (enterprise marketing and alliances), HP India Sales Pvt Ltd.

"We're confident that our technologies and this partnership with TIFR will contribute to many breakthroughs in the areas of computer science and mathematics that will have tangible benefits for people both in India and around the world."

HP has a worldwide market share of 32 per cent in the HPC space. Its global customer base in this area includes Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in US, Shangai University in China, National High Performance Computing Centre in Taiwan and CERN in Geneva.