EKA (supercomputer)

EKA (the Sanskrit name for number one) is a supercomputer ranked as the 8th fastest in the world and fastest in Asia as of June 2008, according to the Top 500 Supercomputer list built by Hewlett-Packard. [cite web | url=http://www.top500.org/list/2008/06/100 | title=TOP500 List - June 2008 | publisher=Top500.org | accessdate=2008-06-23]

The supercomputer built at the Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) by Hewlett-Packard facility at Pune, India, marked a milestone in the Tata Group's effort to build an indigenous high-performance computing solution. CRL built the supercomputer facility using dense data centre layout and novel network routing and parallel processing library technologies developed by its scientists. It was reported to have cost $30 million dollars to build. [cite web|url= http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2539368,prtpage-1.cms|title= Tata's supercomputer Eka is fastest in Asia|accessdate= 2008-03-29|publisher= The Economic Times]

EKA has 1,794 computing nodes and has a theoretical peak performance of 172.2 Teraflops (tflops or trillion floating point operations per second) and a sustained performance of 132.8 teraflops based on the LINPACK benchmarks which are used by the world-wide community to rank supercomputers based on performance.

EKA follows a near-circular layout of the data center unlike the traditional hot aisle and cold aisle rows. This near-circular layout enables the building of densely packed supercomputers, and this is the first time this architecture has been tried out on this scale. The CRL supercomputer has been built using CLOS architecture with off-the-shelf servers and Infiniband interconnect technologies with Linux as the operating system. This is the first ever site in the world which has used the dual data rate Infiniband with fibre-optic cable technology for superior performance.

ee also

* Computational Research Laboratories (CRL)
* PARAM India's first TFLOPS Computer by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing or C-DAC in Pune, India

References

Additional References

* [http://www.tata.com/tata_sons/releases/20071113.htm www.tata.com/tata_sons/releases/20071113.htm]
* [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India_joins_computer_super_league/articleshow/2538928.cms timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India_joins_computer_super_league/articleshow/2538928.cms]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7092339.stm India enters supercomputing race - BBC]

External links

* Eka on [http://top500.org/system/9020 Top 500 Supercomputer list]
* Tata Group's CRL's [http://www.crlindia.com/ Official Website]
* [http://www.cdac.in/html/parampma.asp PARAM information from C-DAC website]