CRN(01-06-2009)
http://www.crn.in/Supercomputer-as-a-Service-Special-Focus-001Jun009.aspx
Supercomputer as a Service
Tata Sons’ subsidiary, CRL, is pioneering a revolution in the country by offering on rent
the massive processing power of Eka, its supercomputer
By Srikanth RP
One and half year 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 by
offering its supercomputing power on
rent. For now, for want of a better
phrase, let us call it ‘Supercomputer as a
service.’
With more than 40 organizations in India
hiring its services, CRL has made a mark
in a field where only a few organizations
have dared to venture. In a period of
recession, Eka has opened up new
possibilities for industries that require
the massive crunching power of
supercomputers—but only during certain
phases of their product development
lifecycle.
For example, Tata Elxsi used Eka’s
processing power to reduce the time
required for rendering the animation
movie, Roadside Romeo. The activity,
which would have taken the firm
approximately 36-40 months to digitally
render the movie in a studio, took only
six months due to the computing power
of Eka. It is significant to note that the
firm achieved this feat using only onethird of the processing power of Eka.
Similarly, leading aerospace company
Boeing is using Eka’s capability to bring
its ideas to the market faster by offering
design and simulation support. And Tata
Motors is using Eka for vehicle
simulation and testing digital prototypes.
CRL is also looking at potential
opportunities in sectors such as life
sciences, weather forecasting, animation
and automotives.
Talk to Seetha Rama Krishna, Head,
HPC Engineering & Operations, CRL,
and one can gauge the ambitious goals
of the company. “‘Supercomputing
made easy’ is our goal,” declares
Krishna while explaining his firm’s
vision to take supercomputers to the
retail level.
CRL’s initiative is a pioneering effort
because it is the first time that a
corporate institution is taking the lead in
extending the domain of high
performance computing (HPC) from the
academic field to the enterprise. This is
partly
because
a
large-scale
supercomputing infrastructure has been
typically
owned
by
government
institutions and is therefore not largely
used to its full potential. Being researchfocused, these institutions have little
inclination or capability to deliver
supercomputing as a utility service.
On the other hand, while private
institutions in the oil and gas sector, or
the automotive industry, would love to
use a supercomputer, they cannot justify
the cost of investing in a supercomputer
that will be used only during specific
periods.
a number of institutions do not have
people with the requisite skills to
effectively use a supercomputer.
CRL is attempting to walk the tight-rope
between these two worlds by offering
services that are cost-effective even for
small companies. “As an Indian
company, it is in our genes to be costeffective and deliver services that are on
par or better than those delivered by our
global counterparts,” says Krishna
commenting on the huge interest global
firms have shown in his company’s
services.
To encourage more enterprises to start
using the supercomputer on rent, CRL is
offering the services through three
options: a pay-per-use model, a fixed
capacity model, and through turnkeybased customized solutions. Krishna
envisages percolating the concept of
supercomputers on rent to small-scale
enterprises or even professionals who
might want to use the processing power
of a supercomputer for a specific period.
While few have succeeded in this field,
the present economic situation is perhaps
the perfect time to make this concept
successful. “Eka’s tremendous numbercrunching ability is ideal for research
labs that require computing power for
shorter durations, but do not have the
money or technical skills to build or
maintain these solutions,” says Sandeep
Lodha,
Vice
President,
Netweb
Technologies, a firm with huge domain
experience in the HPC field. Netweb has
implemented over 60 HPC installations
for a few major Indian scientific
institutions as well as a number of firms
in the bioinformatics domain which are
using supercomputers to cut down the
time required for drug discovery.
Netweb also has a small setup in its
office where it offers supercomputing
power on rent to some of its customers
who are thinking of buying their own.
Krishna certainly has the experience to
walk the talk. He was the founder of the
HPC solutions division at C-DAC, the
state-owned firm that gave India its first
supercomputer way back in the eighties.
CRL has succeeded because few
organizations today have the financial
bandwidth to afford a supercomputer.
They are also unwilling to pay for the
administrative costs of maintaining a
supercomputer. In this scenario, the
concept of offering computing power as
a service has struck the right chord
because clients are happy to rent it on a
need-to basis at a price they can afford.
Eka is looking to occupy the vacant
space with supercomputing solutions
that can be effectively used by a large as
well as small enterprise.
Eka is also attracting the attention of
Indian scientific and research institutions
since a majority of these have
supercomputers which are idle for a
significant amount of time. Additionally,
Three options
Lodha says that once the cost-value
equation becomes clear, more global
organizations will come to India to
outsource
their
data
crunching
requirements. A small trend in this
direction is already taking place—Eka
has been attracting huge interest from
overseas clients interested in using the
domain capabilities of the CRL team to
test their applications.
“We are aiming to be a catalyst in this
space and believe that as we push down
the price and offer it as a utility model
we can effectively remove the capacity
constraint of users, physically and
mentally.
Imagine the impact when enterprises are
given the power to crunch design times
because of advanced computing
capability. If more Indian enterprises
have the opportunity to use this
capability they can deliver advanced
products faster to the market,” says
Krishna about the strategic impact that
supercomputers can have in generating
insights from vast amounts of data,
insights which could have eluded them if
they had used traditional versions of
computing.
By offering the supercomputing platform
as a service, and bringing the benefits of
a platform that has historically been out
of the reach of most enterprises, CRL
has the potential to accelerate design and
research, and revolutionize the way
things are done.
Similar to what Tata Motors has done
with the launch of the Nano, another
Tata group company can blaze a trail
and create a new market.