India

EKA – The world's 4th Fastest Super Computer

Posted on in Categories Hardware, High performance computing, India, Linux, Linux distribution last updated March 29, 2008

In November 2007 EKA was announced, which is privately funded supercomputer. Eka, built by CRL, Pune is the world’s 4th fastest supercomputer, and the fastest one that didn’t use government funding. This is the same supercomputer referenced in Yahoo!’s recent announcement about cloud computing research at the Hadoop Summit. This article describes some of the technical details of Eka’s design and implementation.

My town – pune is home to some of the best supercomputing research and development facility into the area of software and other related technology. C-DAC (a scientific society of the Department of Information Technology, Government of India) has developed and supplied a range of high performance parallel computers, known as the PARAM series of supercomputers. Now CRL – a tata group company build the EKa one of the top 10 supercomputers in the world, Eka is the only system that was fully privately funded. All other systems used government money, so all of them are for captive use. This means that Eka is the only system in the top 10 that is available for commercial use without strings attached.

The computing infrastructure itself consists of:

  1. 1800 blades, 4 cores each. 3Ghz for each core.
  2. HP SFS clusters
  3. 28TB memory
  4. 80TB storage. Simple SATA disks. 5.2Gbps throughput.
  5. Lustre distributed file-system
  6. 20Gbps infiniband DDR. Eka was on the cutting edge of Infiniband technology. They sourced their infiniband hardware from an Israeli company and where amongst the first users of their releases – including beta, and even alpha quality stuff.
  7. Multiple Gigabit ethernets
  8. Linux is the underlying OS. Any Linux will work – RedHat, SuSe, your favorite distribution.

=> Building EKA – The world’s fastest privately funded supercomputer

Internet Fiber-Optic Link SEA-ME-WE 4 / FLAG Damaged- Bandwidth Crisis Hits India and Middle East

Posted on in Categories India, News last updated February 1, 2008

Not just one but two undersea links are cut and totally out of service. 60% of Indian home and business are experiencing disruption. My home 8Mbps ADSL connection only working at 512K speed 🙁 It could take up to one week to repair the damaged cables and resume full service. The cause of the damage (SEA-ME-WE 4 and FLAG cables in the Mediterranean Sea) has not been declared, but a number of news sources speculate that the damage was caused by a ship’s anchor near Alexandria. However, my works place has no effect as traffic immediately routed using Atlantic ocean cable / gateway (hell we have 5 level redundancy and multiple ISPs).

Operations outsourced to India from the UK and US are badly hit and my friends working with those organizations are totally stressed out. Many of my friends worked all night to restore service for home users. I feel sorry for them. I consider my self lucky for not working with any ISP teach support department.

meditrranean.jpeg
[ Fig:01 Cuts in two international submarine cable systems in the Mediterranean Sea (image credit, TOI) ]

Update: A third submarine internet cable is severed in the Middle East, compounding global net problems.

News Coverage

Have you been affected by the disruption to internet services?

Asus Linux EEE PC – India Launch on 29th January 2008

Posted on in Categories Debian Linux, Howto, India, Linux, Linux laptop last updated January 27, 2008

Eee Pc launch is scheduled on 29th January 2008. People interested in purchasing Eee PC should directly contact Asus Mumbai Headquarters. You can also book online at Asus EEE Pc India website. Models are galaxy black and pearl white for INR 18,000/ price.

More information about EEE PC specification available here. I’m going to get one for myself 😀

Update: I talked to someone at Asus and PC will be available from 1st week of Feb-2008 for rest of the India. So if you are in Bangalore or Delhi wait till next week.

Happy Diwali

Posted on in Categories Beyond nixCraft, India last updated November 7, 2007

I’d like to wish all of our readers around the world and India, a safe and happy holiday season. Wishing each one of you a very happy and prosperous Diwali. Hope the light of this festive period shines in all of your life 🙂

I’m quite busy with decorating homes with lights, fireworks, distributing sweets and gifts. I’ll be out of the office spending time with friends and family until Monday, Nov- 13th, you can expect slightly longer comment approval and posting from me.

Notes from a freed.in ~ FOSS conference in New Delhi with videos

Posted on in Categories Beyond nixCraft, GNU/Open source, India, News last updated October 11, 2007

I missed FOSS conference in New Delhi ~ over 700 people, two days of sheer fun, excitement and lots of FOSS 🙁 I was in Chennai.. anyway freed.in is the leading community event in the Indian sub-continent and the developing world, promoting freedom in technology, software and other related fields, and personal privacy. The annual event makes free and open source software more visible to the world, and shares its excitement with everybody. freed.in helps nurture the community and enables networking within and outside the community in a fun environment. The event strives towards seeding of new projects.

Mayank Sharma has posted news and videos here.

Happy 60th birthday, India!

Posted on in Categories Beyond nixCraft, India last updated August 15, 2007

Happy 60th birthday, India! Don’t forget to taste the freedom with Open source software. If you value independence go with Linux, Firefox and other open source software 🙂

Today we gain independence from the United Kingdom and becomes an independent nation. Jawaharlal Nehru addresses the nation with the Indian Declaration of Independence and takes office as the first Prime Minister of India. Live it up India!

Open source usage increased in Indian and Asian business

Posted on in Categories GNU/Open source, India, Linux, News last updated July 11, 2007

This news is 100% true; I’ve witnessed lots of growth recently here in India, especially in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Many south states making it compulsory to use Linux and open source software for government funded project.

Way back in 1999 I switched from Windows to Linux desktop because:
=> Cost
=> Virus issues
=> Reliability & Security

Today I can almost purchase any computer or toy, money is not issue, but I still prefer to use Linux as desktop. Windows Vista has given companies in less-developed markets a reason to consider open source alternatives, especially hardware requirements are high. People in Asia still purchase and use old Celeron based computer with 128 / 256 MB RAM, here is my desktop CPU (I’m using it since last 4 years):
$ grep -i cpu /proc/cpuinfo
Output:

cpu family      : 15
model name      : Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 1.70GHz
cpu MHz         : 1716.927
cpuid level     : 2

Open source accounts for between 25 and 70 percent of all software in Australian, Chinese, Indian and Korean companies, according to a recent IDC survey.In an interview with ZDNet Australia sister site ZDNet Asia, Wilvin Chee, research director with IDC’s Asia-Pacific software research group, said: “Businesses are using a variety of open source software, ranging from infrastructure software and storage to enterprise applications such as CRM (customer relationship management) and ERM (enterprise resource management).”

Conducted by IDC between February and March this year, the study involved top executives from about 1,000 companies of all sizes.

Open source take-up booming in APAC (Via digg)

Intel ClassMatePC comes with Mandriva Linux

Posted on in Categories India, Linux, Linux desktop, Linux distribution, Linux Embedded devices, News last updated April 2, 2007

Classmate PC is a small, mobile learning-assistant and educational solution that Intel specially developed for students in emerging markets such as India, Mexico etc.

The rugged learning device, designed to provide affordable, collaborative learning environments.

This PC comes with Mandriva Linux (another good Linux desktop distro).

A classmate PC is designed with a set of particular features, such as:

Intel ClassMatePC comes with Mandriva Linux

Intel ClassMatePC Pictures / Photo

Rugged, light-weight, and easy to carry design, integrated handwriting hardware technology, and a software stack with validated educational applications, e.g., education management technology.

Wireless and messaging systems that allow a tight integration and interaction between users from different groups, allowing them to share experiences, communicate and coordinate activities, and collaborate.

Classmatepc project website (via )