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Supercomputing or High Performance Computing (HPC), is witnessing a growth momentum in India, thanks to lessening of restrictions and easy availability of components (both hardware and software) to assemble a supercomputer. This has resulted in increased demand for HPC in various sectors of the industry, broadening the base of installing supercomputers in India, which traditionally were confined to leading research and scientific institutions.

All this is good news for global HPC vendors like HP, IBM, SGI, Dell apart from some of the relatively new players like Wipro Infotech and HCL Technologies. According to estimates, the domestic market for supercomputers is presently more than $1 bn.

Going Back in Time
Due to restrictions put in place by the US government in the 1980s, the import of components to assemble a supercomputer was a near impossibility as most supercomputing vendors were primarily from the US. India wanted to import a CRAY supercomputer, which was denied by the US government through a "Denial List Parties". The reason was the United States fear that the components might be used for military purposes. C-DAC spearheaded Indias capability to independently develop supercomputers and all efforts resulted in the development of the famed Param Padma, which put India on the global map.

That was then. Now, things have changed for the better. There is no need to import components needed for assembling a supercomputer as they are available in India. The only restriction applies to MNC vendors like HP and IBM who have a list of names to whom they cannot supply. According to Viswanath Ramaswamy, general manager, Projects, STG, IBM India/South Asia, "We have come a long way on this issue. Today, organizations can go in for 600 or more nodes without going in for any approvals. It is also due to the improvement in the US and India relations."

Beyond R&D
An interesting development in India is that supercomputers have become more mainstream. It is not confined to only research institutions any more as was the case traditionally. According to Ramaswamy, "It is growing in multiple segments. We see a decent growth in embedded design architecture and VLSI design."

Ashutosh Vaidya, VP, Personal Computing Division, Wipro Infotech, says, "Now it is possible for even an engineering college, present in almost every district, to install a supercomputer. The prices are very affordable and it can start from 8 nodes onward."

According to Faisal Paul, country manager, High Performance Computing & Linux Business, Technology Solutions Group, HP India, "It was a myth that HPC is only meant for research institutes. This was broken with supercomputers being built with small building blocks". He also feels that organizations dont need to earmark huge investment upfront. It can be done on a piece-by-piece approach. Organizations can start small and as the business grows, they can add more compute power to machines.

Global and Indian Landscape
According to Anand Babu, CTO of Z Research, a supercomputing company uses software technology based on free software and "open standards" to enable system integrators to deploy supercomputers, "Two things that have revolutionized supercomputing and superstorage are free software movement and clustered architecture-based hardware. In the past, supercomputers were primarily on a proprietary technology and not affordable at all. Only national labs could afford them. It was clustering of different machines to get more compute power that really revolutionized it.

"It was the clustered architecture, the Linux kernel, and a bunch of software that were developed to put together a loosely connected machine together to run some scientific applications," adds Babu.

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