India High Tech: A Homebrew Supercomputer

At the other extreme of technological innovation in India, the Tata Group has recently brought online the printer kopen as well with the first privately funded and built supercomputer in the world, which has been benchmarked as the 4th fastest such machine in existence.

As reported in India's Businessworld magazine, the team confronted a vast range of organizational challenges, as the funding had to be obtained from Tata Group's senior-most managers, and then one of its key members quit the project over what was politely termed a “difference of opinion," but which was probably just one of many rip-roaring arguments between the strong-minded innovators who worked on the project.

There were also, of course, a host of technical issues. One key challenge was fitting the enormous machine into the 4000 square foot space that was allocated for it. It is frequently the nature of creativity that constraints become the basis of innovation, and the space shortage led to a critical design insight, as the size of the room led to a dense system layout that enhanced performance. According to a team member, “But for that constraint, we may not have thought of the innovative architecture.”

Despite the "compact" architecture, the machine still required 35 kilometers of wiring. It also consumes 2.5 megawatts of power, enough to light a small town. And rather than being challenged by rats, it's the bugs that they're busy eradicating in this machine....

The supercomputer is available on a timeshare basis, and competes in significant market that is estimated at a healthy $31 billion worldwide that counts among key customers aircraft designers who use supercomputers to calculate aerodynamic performance, and pharmaceutical companies that attempt to predict complex chemical reactions in drug performance.