What a sea-change in computer scene!. There was a time when the U.S. had
banned export of supercomputer to India. This was followed by Pune-based
C-DAC coming out with its own Param series of computers. Now a private
company in India is going to launch* a supercomputer. We surely are
living in exciting times.



Dr D.C.Misra

September 12, 2007



________________________________________________________________________\
_

*Wipro ready to unveil supercomp this week

Mini Joseph Tejaswi | TNN



Bangalore: Wipro will launch a supercomputer that can perform billions
of operations in a second later this week. This is the first time that
an Indian private company will be introducing such a machine.



Targeted at various uses such as weather forecast, satellite launch,
clinical trials, drug development, nanoresearch, defence, avionics and
other high-end R&D, the supercomputer is designed and developed in
association with C-DAC in Pune.



``The supercomputer series will be named after different flowers
and they will bear competitive price tags. Wipro is making a clear
distinction in the computing space by getting into the supercomputer
segment,'' said an industry source. Wipro will customise these
computers for customer requirements. Wipro has long been into computer
hardware and is a significant player in the Indian PC and peripherals
market.



According to a source, Wipro has deployed these computer giants for
several
clients including defence and aviation. "Wipro has been exploring
the possibility of introducing a product like this for sometime now as
it has seen huge market opportunity among multiple business
verticals," said the source.



These teraflop computer clusters will have a different look and feel,
compared to Wipro's regular PCs, and will be the last-mile access
points for high-speed, super-memory, mission-critical computing.
IBM's Blue Gene is the latest supercomputer available in market. It
has a calculating speed of 135.5 teraflops.



Globally, supercomputers are used for heavy stuff like weather maps,
atom bombs, finding oil, earthquake prediction, and sciences where a lot
of calculations are required. They are also used to help governments
eavesdrop on anything passing through telephone, data lines, e-mail, or
radio waves.



(Source: Tejaswi, Mini Joseph (2007): Wipro ready to unveil supercomp
this week, The Times of India, New Delhi, September 12, Wednesday,
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Daily/skins/TOI/navigator.asp?Daily=CAP&l\
ogin=drdcmisra&AW=1185441624796, accessed: September 12, 2007).





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]