ENGINEERING

Nvidia is collaborating with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT-Delhi), to establish a research lab for Exascale computing, the first such lab in the country.

Under the agreement, IIT-Delhi will provide the infrastructure for the Exascale Research Lab, (ERL) including software and computing systems, while Nvidia will provide Graphics Processing Units (GPU) accelerators and access to its supercomputing and scientific application domain expertise, in addition to marketing support.

Dr Vijay Bhatkar, father of Indian supercomputing, said the country had crossed the petaflop computer range and needs exascale computers, which are machines capable of performing 1000 trillion operations a second.

Pointing out that huge power consumption remained the main challenge for these machines, he said exascale computing requires breakthrough innovation and re-designing of processors. “The future lies in low-cost, low-power computing,” he added.

“The Lab can potentially help India leapfrog ahead in the supercomputing world,” said Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, NVIDIA India. “The lab’s high-performance, energy efficient Nvidia GPU accelerators will enable researchers to build next-generation supercomputing technologies while maximising costs and power savings — a critical challenge to overcome for the success of any exascale initiative.”

The Indian Government has proposed huge investments to upgrade the country’s supercomputing infrastructure. The ERL will help it achieve this goal by 2017 by providing advanced ongoing research, testing, and technology development in a variety of areas.