With 25% growth witnessed every year and vendors opting for the channel route, partners have reason enough to smile.
Do you have computational tasks too large for a single machine? Are you
trying to model biological molecules, or render a 3D movie? Here is how computer
science can make your job easy. All thanks to one of its branches called high
performance computing or HPC.
To define it technically, HPC is a branch of computer science that
concentrates on developing supercomputers and also the software to run on them.
In layman's terms, HPC refers to a collection of computers that process a
variety of applications through both parallel processing as well as
multi-tasking in a very short period of time. HPC therefore implies a set of
machines working together to process an application and give results quickly.
HPC
can be divided into supercomputers and clusters. Supercomputers are employed for
specialized applications, which need large mathematical calculations. Examples
are weather forecasting, animated graphics, fluid dynamic calculations, nuclear
energy research, and petroleum exploration.
Clusters help to process huge amounts of data across networks within a few
seconds. Today, the HPC segment has moved beyond academia and R&D institutes
to include manufacturing, design, news and media, biotechnology, oil and gas,
pharma industries.
What's new?
It would be no exaggeration to say that the HPC concept is a relatively new
one and especially so in India. The latest in this area being, what is referred
to as Grid Computing.
In a broad sense, grid computing could be classified into three main types -
the campus grid, the metropolitan grid and the global grid. A campus grid would
essentially mean that two institutes are tied up in order to share both
resources and information.
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A metropolitan grid would, for example, handle data that pertain to the
weather forecasts of two regions- say Bangalore and Chennai, while the global
grid would have data exchange pertaining to weather forecasting around the
globe.
What criteria should solution providers consider while deploying HPC
solutions to their clients? It is important to remember that solutions provided
can be either CPU-technology dependent or dependent on memory-technology.
Also, with changing times, one is talking of enhanced memory in gigabytes.
Therefore, when one thinks of a solution, it is important that the solution
provided is scalable and more importantly available.
What that means, is that the solution must have the capability to match up to
the increasing needs of the user. Availability would mean that a scalable
technology is ready 'on demand'. These essentially are the key points to be
borne in mind while devising an HPC solution.
Challenges to overcome
Against the backdrop of an increasing need for HPC solutions, one needs to
keep in mind that demand will continue to ascend. Thus, one has to be prepared
to enforce betterment in the technology with time. The biggest challenges while
trying to do that are firstly the connectivity. This in essence means the need
for a dedicated bandwidth or pipe on the grid side especially, for smooth data
transfer.
Equally challenging are those issues pertaining to the processing end, which
could still do with a lot of betterment. Other challenges would be looking at
feasibility options of setting up the particular bandwidth. Another issue, at
least for the moment, is the huge costs incurred. Many HPC solutions run into a
few billion dollars.
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Indian HPC is basically a vendor-dependant business and it is no exaggeration
to say that there is big money out there. IT vendors today, believe that HPC is
a high growth segment and can be adapted to any enterprise. The four major
players in this arena are Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI), HP, Sun
Microsystems and IBM. In India, companies like SGI and HP handle about half the
business in the HPC segment directly, while the rest is dealt by their tier-one
partners like: SIs, Tata Elxsi, CMC and others. Sun Microsystems banks on its
Indian partners Accel ICIM, Wipro, Locus, Summation, Skylark, Frontier and
Progression Infotech to deploy its HPC projects.
Business scenario
The market opportunity available in India is roughly about $30 million every
year with an annual growth of around 20-30%. According to Beurie, "India is
largely dependant on this business from outside. Since the country has huge
resources in terms of manufacturing, IT-services and workforce, we would
certainly stand to gain, as the demand for HPC solutions grows bigger."
Future prospects and likely beneficiaries from HPC solutions could include
R&D, education,
defense and other government projects in addition to a whole range of
manufacturing and other product industries.
With high growth potential of the HPC segment, vendors are trying to make
better inroads into the market via the channel route. They believe that niche
expertise is needed in this space. Depending on the kind of implementations,
turnkey projects would be available in areas like networking, storage networks
and related software expertise.
Vendors also believe that solution partners may have to shift from box
selling to technology selling to make a difference in the field. If partners can
capitalize on this opportunity, it could well mean a quantum leap for
business.Â
Beuri Simmons is Head, Enterprise Systems (Servers and Storage) of NewWave
Computing.