India's Fastest Supercomputer 'SahasraT' Launched at IISc - First PFlop/s HPC System (1.46 PFlop/s)

[Chanakya's_Chant]

IISc's supercomputer SahasraT adds to Indian computing might

Installation & Commissioning of the Cray XC-40 at SERC, IISc
​

BENGALURU: India's most-powerful supercomputer is now housed in the city's Indian Institute of Science, strengthening the country's position in the global high-power computing race that is currently led by China.​

On May 11, the IISc's Supercomputer Education and Research Centre (SERC) discreetly inaugurated the Cray XC40 petaflop supercomputer, christened as SahasraT.

"This unprecedentedly large, powerful computer gives our scientists the opportunity to do all the things they could not previously," IISc Director Anurag Kumar told ET.

SahasraT's computational abilities has been tested with promising results. An entire landing sequence of a high-lift wing was simulated using complex physics, and so was the overlap of supernovae forming a hot over pressured bubble.

"The system will help scientists in complex weather climate modelling, molecular and materials research and aerospace engineering. Every field has computational problems, so not a single field can be left out," Kumar said, adding that the SahasraT cost around $13 million (82.70 crore).

The SahasraT overtakes Aaditya at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, which was India's fastest supercomputer ranked 71 globally by Top500, an agency that ranks supercomputers. SahasraT clocks a total peak performance of 1.46 petaflops, where one petaflop is 10 to the power of 15 mathematical computations per second.But with 33.86 petaflops, the world's fastest supercomputer is the Tianhe-2 at National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou, China.

"This is a huge improvement over our previous fastest supercomputer, which was the IBM BlueGeneL," said Adarsh Patil, a master's student at the IISc Department of Computer Science and Automation.

In March, the Centre launched the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) to connect academic and research institutions with a grid of over 70 high-performance computing facilities at an estimated cost of 4,500 crore. SahasraT has nothing do with the NSM that is yet to start and it is a part of SERC's own expansion, said aerospace engineering professor N Balakrishnan.

"Apart from investing in technology, India needs a broader, long term government-industry-academia initiative to develop human resource in the field of high performance computing," said Vishal Dhupar, managing director, South Asia at graphics technology company Nvidia.

Source:- IISc's supercomputer SahasraT adds to Indian computing might - timesofindia-economictimes

 

[Chanakya's_Chant]

Very recently another HPC system named 'Bhaskara' was commissioned at the Earth System Science Organisation -- National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ESSO-NCMRWF) for meteorological applications and research.

Supercomputer Bhaskara to give boost to weather forecasting - The Times of India

Two new Supercomputers commissioned within two weeks - this comes in line with the GoI's plan to have 70 supercomputers in the country by 2022 to enable high-level research in different fields.

India will have 70 supercomputers by 2022 to help in research: report | The Indian Express

 

[Skull and Bones]

Every government university and technological institute should host a supercomputer for theoretical modelling and computational physics.

 

[cirr]

A small but necessary step。

 

[Chanakya's_Chant]

SERC, IISc gets PetaScale CRAY XC-40 SuperComputer - Sahasrat

Recently, I had the privilege of being a part of the inauguration ceremony of the new CRAY XC-40 PetaFLOPS SuperComputer at SuperComputer Education and Research Center (SERC) at the Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore). The inauguration was on 11th May and I was invited largely because of my Prof (hint hint Chairman SERC) and my chosen research field - High Performance Computing. The new machine was named Sahasrat - Sahasra meaning thousand spokes or arms.

For some people the term "SuperComputer" remains shrouded in mystery. Computer pundits, pardon me for my oversimplified attempt at jargon busting here. A SuperComputer is a cohesive and integrated group of large number CPU processors and accelerator clusters (GPGPU card, Many Integrated Cores[MIC], etc.) tied together with a superfast network interconnect and proportionately fast storage solution. All this hardware supported by scalable software libraries and binaries to run applications transparently. We are talking CPU cores in the ballparks of 10s of thousands, network speeds of multiple gigabits and a guaranteed availability of 99.999% (Quick math - downtime of 5 mins in a whole year). Obviously, such a large system would generate tremendous amount of heat and gulp the power nectar and hence the supporting datacenter/cooling design/setup and maintenance costs are tremendous. Such large systems can only be afforded by a privileged few countries. At 1.2 PetaFLOPS theoretical maximum computational power this new machine is the fastest in India and puts itself and India in about 50-60 ranked super computer in the world according to the soon to be released June 2015 top500 SuperComputer list. This is a huge improvement over our previous fastest SuperComputer in India also at SERC the 22.94 teraFLOPS Rpeak (theoretical maximum) IBM BlueGene/L. The current fastest supercomputer in the world churns out about 33 PetaFLOPS (in China).

To give you a sense of what this accomplishment means to us and why we should be proud of it, here is an excerpt from top500.org which ranks the top500 most powerful computer systems in the world.

So far, there have been 42 editions of the Top500 List. Over those editions, a total of 58 countries have appeared on the list.

Depending on how one counts, there are somewhere between 191 and 260 “countries” in the world. So, the list of those that at one time or another chose to join the list is in the range of 22% to 30% of total countries.

This is an elite list. A look at the countries owning the top 100 of these tells us there about 18 countries and being part of that is as elite as the 9 countries who have sent a satellites to Mars! I have witnessed first hand the effort and pains in setting up and assembling Sahasrat everyday when I come to the lab and believe me it's been a superb effort by the team here. Having narrated the technical specifications of Sahasrat at the inauguration ceremony, let me elucidate the same here to blow your minds:

Sahasrat draws its massive computational power from 3 clusters as below:

• 
  COMPUTE
• CPU Cluster - Intel Xeon E5-2680v3 @ 2.5GHz (Haswell) based 1376 compute nodes with a total count of 33024 cores (24 cores per node) with a sustained peformance of 950 TFLOPS
• GPU Cluster - NVIDIA Tesla K-40 based 44 nodes (2880 cores per node) with a sustained performance of 52TFLOPS
• MIC Cluster - Intel XeonPhi 5120D Knights Corner based 48 nodes with a sustained performance of 28TFLOPS
  STORAGE
• High Speed 2 PetaByte storage space connected by infiniband- FDR using Cray's parallel Lustre filesystem in RAID6 configuration.
  NETWORK
• Proprietary Cray Aries Interconnect with Dragonfly Topology
  OS and Software
• Cray's customised SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 called Cray Linux Environment (CLE)
• Several parallel program development tools, architecture specific compilers, parallel scientific and mathematical libraries.

Flow Solver HiFUN. They have simulated 36 million volume grids for more than 11 simulation seconds of a landing sequence, at a granularity of 1 millisecond, using 10000 cores. There are three distinct phases. Gliding and flaring where the wind incidence increases. In the post-touch down phase where the wind incidence is lost while on ground roll.
The astro-physics user group simulated the overlap of supernovae that forms a hot, over-pressured bubble using the public domain PLUTO hydrodynamics code using about 12,000 cores (roughly one-third of the system).

There are however some clear caveats that come with the machine. As we procured this machine from CRAY systems (USA) and haven't manufactured this machine indigenously the US is obviously afraid of such large computational power falling into our hands and being used for wrong purposes (for defense and space research etc.) and hence by contract this machine will be strictly off limits for all non academic users. Yeah it's a bummer but I hope we quietly learn on our part from this system and take it in our stride. Maybe one day we can build an indigenous supercomputer to rub it in their face. There is already a National SuperComputing Mission setup by CDAC in India that will invest Rs.4,500 crore ($730 million) towards advancing our interests in the High Performance Computing field both in terms of resources and qualified manpower. I leave you with some images (in the video below) taken during the installation and commissioning of the CRAY system at SERC and the tech spec slides I narrated at the inauguration.

EDIT: Excerpts of this blog appeared in Economic Times (Bangalore Edition) 22nd May Data Drive: IISc Brings Supercomp Right Here

Also read:
On Quora - What would be the reason behind IISc purchasing the new CRAY XC-40 supercomputer for their SERC department?
The Meraki Soul - A walkthrough my days at IISc through these pictures.

Source:- TimeWarp - IISc SERC CRAY XC-40 Supercomputer - Sahasrat

 

[Echo_419]

A small but necessary step。

Indeed but damm how did you managed to build that thing (33 petraflop super comp)

IISc's supercomputer SahasraT adds to Indian computing might

Installation & Commissioning of the Cray XC-40 at SERC, IISc
​

BENGALURU: India's most-powerful supercomputer is now housed in the city's Indian Institute of Science, strengthening the country's position in the global high-power computing race that is currently led by China.​

On May 11, the IISc's Supercomputer Education and Research Centre (SERC) discreetly inaugurated the Cray XC40 petaflop supercomputer, christened as SahasraT.

"This unprecedentedly large, powerful computer gives our scientists the opportunity to do all the things they could not previously," IISc Director Anurag Kumar told ET.

SahasraT's computational abilities has been tested with promising results. An entire landing sequence of a high-lift wing was simulated using complex physics, and so was the overlap of supernovae forming a hot over pressured bubble.

"The system will help scientists in complex weather climate modelling, molecular and materials research and aerospace engineering. Every field has computational problems, so not a single field can be left out," Kumar said, adding that the SahasraT cost around $13 million (82.70 crore).

The SahasraT overtakes Aaditya at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, which was India's fastest supercomputer ranked 71 globally by Top500, an agency that ranks supercomputers. SahasraT clocks a total peak performance of 1.46 petaflops, where one petaflop is 10 to the power of 15 mathematical computations per second.But with 33.86 petaflops, the world's fastest supercomputer is the Tianhe-2 at National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou, China.

"This is a huge improvement over our previous fastest supercomputer, which was the IBM BlueGeneL," said Adarsh Patil, a master's student at the IISc Department of Computer Science and Automation.

In March, the Centre launched the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) to connect academic and research institutions with a grid of over 70 high-performance computing facilities at an estimated cost of 4,500 crore. SahasraT has nothing do with the NSM that is yet to start and it is a part of SERC's own expansion, said aerospace engineering professor N Balakrishnan.

"Apart from investing in technology, India needs a broader, long term government-industry-academia initiative to develop human resource in the field of high performance computing," said Vishal Dhupar, managing director, South Asia at graphics technology company Nvidia.

Source:- IISc's supercomputer SahasraT adds to Indian computing might - timesofindia-economictimes

So what's our new ranking

 

[Chanakya's_Chant]

The list would be updated soon by the end of this month - India had 9 supercomputers in the November 2014 list which is bound to increase.

 

[airuah]

thats around somewhere in the 30-40th position on top speeds

 

[Echo_419]

thats around somewhere in the 30-40th position on top speeds

Well improvement from 71 but still a far cry from our psst glory

thats around somewhere in the 30-40th position on top speeds

An improvement from 71 but still a far cry from our past glory

 

[Chanakya's_Chant]

Supercomputer 'Bhaskara' Unveiled, to Give Boost to Weather Forecasting​

Representational picture. (Thinkstock)​

NEW DELHI: Union Minister Harsha Vardhan today dedicated to the nation supercomputer 'Bhaskara', which will help meteorologists in research and weather prediction including effective forecast of tropical cyclone, heavy rainfall and cloud burst events.

The present augmentation shall enable the Earth System Science Organisation-National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ESSO-NCMRWF) to provide very high resolution 10 days' deterministic weather forecasts and probabilistic forecasts from a 44-member ensemble prediction system.

This is within the generally accepted time window of about five hours from the standard observation time with a horizontal resolution of 1.5 km and probabilistic forecasts using an ensemble prediction system.

"Now we are ahead of China and the UK and match the facilities of Europe and the US," Harsh Vardhan, the Minister of Earth Science, said.

E N Rajagopal, Head, NCMRWF said 'Bhaskara' will be very "essential" in ensuring better forecasting.

With the commissioning of the IBM iDataPlex Supercomputer of peak computing power of 350 teraflops with 67 terabytes of aggregate memory, the overall ESSO High Performance Computing (HPC) facility will have a peak computing power of 1.14 petaflops.

Source:- Supercomputer 'Bhaskara' Unveiled, to Give Boost to Weather Forecasting

 

[egodoc222]

Well improvement from 71 but still a far cry from our psst glory



An improvement from 71 but still a far cry from our past glory

I would say the cumulative computing power should be the motto rather than going for the rankings...what I mean is having 20 supercomputers of 1peta flop computing power would do more good than a single 33 peta flop one...
every premier government university should get a supercomputer!!

 

[Echo_419]

I would say the cumulative computing power should be the motto rather than going for the rankings...what I mean is having 20 supercomputers of 1peta flop computing power would do more good than a single 33 peta flop one...
every premier government university should get a supercomputer!!

I agree with you but dick measuring is also a thing nowadays

 

[Chanakya's_Chant]

Every government university and technological institute should host a supercomputer for theoretical modelling and computational physics.

Another! Third within a month!

13th fastest supercomputer in India inaugurated at PRL
Dilip Angom, who led the team in building this supercomputer at PRL said, "Christened as VIKRAM-100, this supercomputer is the 13th fastest supercomputer in India and is more powerful than 200 desktop computers."​

One of the fastest supercomputers in India named after eminent scientist Dr Vikram Sarabhai was inaugurated Friday at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), an organisation that was founded by him at Ahmedabad in 1947.

“This is the first supercomputer in Gujarat of this magnitude,” said Utpal Sarkar, director of PRL where the supercomputer of the High Performance Computing Cluster was formally unveiled by Professor UR Rao, chairman of PRL Council of Management.

Dilip Angom, who led the team in building this supercomputer at PRL said, “Christened as VIKRAM-100, this supercomputer is the 13th fastest supercomputer in India and is more powerful than 200 desktop computers.”

“This computer is also about 50 times more powerful than the one we had earlier. This supercomputer, with a very high computational capacity, can be used to solve advanced computational problems related to field of science,” said Angom on the sidelines of the inaugural function.

This centrally-run supercomputer can support scientists, researchers and research scholars at PRL who require high performance computing which cannot be met by desktop personal computers. It will be used for computing complex data in various areas like space and atmospheric sciences, geoscience, theoretical physics and solar physics.

“The computer named after Dr Vikram Sarabhai costs roughly about Rs 13 crore and can be easily upgraded,” Angom added. The computer has a storage capacity of 300 terabytes of usable space and can help with numerical simulations as well.

Earlier, addressing scientists at PRL, UR Rao said, “I am very delighted about the supercomputer. But please remember computer is a means and not an end… Science does not come from computers. It has to come from you.” Rao also asked scientists at PRL to come up with experiments for national space missions.

Apart from the supercomputer, PRL also inaugurated a Science Exhibition centre within it’s campus and an android based mobile application that helps PRL employees gain easy access to medical and telephone directories even in absence of internet connection.

Source:- 13th fastest supercomputer in India inaugurated at PRL | The Indian Express

 

[Echo_419]

Another! Third within a month!

13th fastest supercomputer in India inaugurated at PRL
Dilip Angom, who led the team in building this supercomputer at PRL said, "Christened as VIKRAM-100, this supercomputer is the 13th fastest supercomputer in India and is more powerful than 200 desktop computers."​

One of the fastest supercomputers in India named after eminent scientist Dr Vikram Sarabhai was inaugurated Friday at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), an organisation that was founded by him at Ahmedabad in 1947.

“This is the first supercomputer in Gujarat of this magnitude,” said Utpal Sarkar, director of PRL where the supercomputer of the High Performance Computing Cluster was formally unveiled by Professor UR Rao, chairman of PRL Council of Management.

Dilip Angom, who led the team in building this supercomputer at PRL said, “Christened as VIKRAM-100, this supercomputer is the 13th fastest supercomputer in India and is more powerful than 200 desktop computers.”

“This computer is also about 50 times more powerful than the one we had earlier. This supercomputer, with a very high computational capacity, can be used to solve advanced computational problems related to field of science,” said Angom on the sidelines of the inaugural function.

This centrally-run supercomputer can support scientists, researchers and research scholars at PRL who require high performance computing which cannot be met by desktop personal computers. It will be used for computing complex data in various areas like space and atmospheric sciences, geoscience, theoretical physics and solar physics.

“The computer named after Dr Vikram Sarabhai costs roughly about Rs 13 crore and can be easily upgraded,” Angom added. The computer has a storage capacity of 300 terabytes of usable space and can help with numerical simulations as well.

Earlier, addressing scientists at PRL, UR Rao said, “I am very delighted about the supercomputer. But please remember computer is a means and not an end… Science does not come from computers. It has to come from you.” Rao also asked scientists at PRL to come up with experiments for national space missions.

Apart from the supercomputer, PRL also inaugurated a Science Exhibition centre within it’s campus and an android based mobile application that helps PRL employees gain easy access to medical and telephone directories even in absence of internet connection.

Source:- 13th fastest supercomputer in India inaugurated at PRL | The Indian Express

What is the speed of this computer

 

[Chanakya's_Chant]

What is the speed of this computer

3.2 TF peak computing performance and 2.2 TF sustained computing performance?

What the heck 3 supercomputers in just one month.
means apart from these three supercomputers we are going to have 70 other computers in 7 years time under NSM didn;t it?

They are probably a part of the same supercomputing mission to have 70 new supercomputers in the country by 2022 to enable high-level research in different fields.