Nearly one and a half years after making a stunning entry into the global supercomputer list with Eka, ranked as the fourth fastest supercomputer in the world, Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), a Tata Sons’ subsidiary, has succeeded in creating a new market for supercomputers – that of offering supercomputing power on rent to enterprises in India. For now, for want of a better word, let us call it ‘Supercomputer as a Service.’
With more than 40 organizations in India hiring its services, CRL has made a mark in a field where only a few organizations have dared to venture. In a period of recession, Eka has opened up new possibilities for industries that require the massive crunching power of supercomputers, but only during certain times of their product development lifecycle.
For example, Tata Elxsi used Eka’s processing power to crunch the time required for rendering the animation movie, ‘Roadside Romeo.’ The activity, which would have taken the firm approximately 36-40 months to digitally render the movie in a studio, took only six months, due to the computing power of Eka. It is also significant to note that the firm achieved this feat using only one-third of the processing power of Eka.
Similarly, leading aerospace company, Boeing, is using Eka’s capability to bring its ideas faster to the market, by offering design and simulation support. Group company, Tata Motors, is using Eka for vehicle simulation and testing digital prototypes. CRL is also looking at potential opportunities in sectors such as Life Science, weather forecasting, animation and in the automotive and aviation industries. This is just a glimpse of the processing power.
Speaking with Seetha Rama Krishna, Head, HPC Engineering and Operations, CRL, one can gauge the ambitious goals of this small company. “‘Supercomputing made easy’ is our goal,” declares Seetha Rama Krishna, while elaborating on his firm’s vision to take supercomputers down to the retail level.
CRL’s initiative is a pioneering effort, as it is the first time that a corporate institution is taking the lead in extending the domain of High Performance Computing (HPC) from the academic field, to the enterprise. This is partly because a large-scale supercomputing infrastructure has been typically owned by government institutions, and is not largely used to its full potential. Being research focused, these institutions have little inclination or capability to deliver it as a utility service.
On the other hand, while private institutions in the oil and gas sector, or the automotive industry, would love to use a supercomputer, they cannot justify the cost of investing in a supercomputer that will be used only during specific periods. CRL is attempting to walk the tight rope between these two worlds, by offering services that are cost-effective even for small companies. “As an Indian company, it is in our ‘genes’ to be cost-effective, and deliver services that are at par or better than our global counterparts,” says Krishna, elaborating on the huge interest global firms have shown in his company’s services. Krishna certainly has the experience to walk the talk, as he has been the founder of the HPC solutions division at C-DAC, the state-owned firm that gave India its first supercomputer, way back in the 80’s.
CRL has succeeded because few organizations today have the financial bandwidth to afford a supercomputer; or because they are unwilling to invest and pay for the administration costs of maintaining a supercomputer. In this scenario, the concept of offering computing power as a service, has struck the right chord, as clients are happy to do this on a need basis at costs they can afford.
Eka is also attracting huge attention from Indian scientific and research institutions, as research shows that a majority of these institutions have supercomputers that are idle for a significant amount of time. Additionally, a significant number of institutions do not have resources with the requisite skills to effectively use or utilize a supercomputer. Eka is looking to occupy this space, with supercomputing solutions that can be effectively used by a large as well as small enterprise.
PAY-PER-USE
To encourage more enterprises to start using the supercomputers on rent, CRL is offering the services through three options: a pay-per-use model, a fixed capacity model, and through turnkey based customized solutions. Krishna envisages percolating the concept of supercomputers on rent, to small-scale enterprises or even professionals who might want to use the processing power of a supercomputer, for a specific period.
While few have succeeded in this field, the present economic condition is perhaps the perfect time to make this concept successful. “Eka’s tremendous number-crunching ability is ideal for research labs that require computing power for smaller durations, but do not have the money or technical skills to build or maintain these kind of solutions,” says Sandeep Lodha, Vice President, Netweb Technologies, a firm with huge domain experience in the HPC field. The firm has implemented over 60 HPC installations for some major Indian scientific institutions, and a number of firms in the bioinformatics domain, which are using supercomputers to cut down the time required for drug discovery. Netweb also has a small setup in its office where it offers supercomputing power on rent to some of its customers, who are contemplating buying their own setup.
Lodha says that once the cost-value equation becomes clear, more global organizations will come to India to outsource their data crunching requirements. A small trend in this direction is already taking place; Eka has been attracting huge interest from overseas clients interested in using the domain capabilities of the CRL team to test their applications.
“We are aiming to be a catalyst in this space and believe that as we push down the price, and offer it as a utility model, we can effectively remove the capacity constraint of users – physically and mentally. Imagine the impact, when enterprises are given the power to crunch design times, because of advanced computing capability. If more Indian enterprises have the ability to use this capability, one can deliver advanced products faster to the market, and lead the market,” says Krishna, speaking on the strategic impact that supercomputers can make, in generating insights from vast amounts of data, which would not be possible using traditional sources of computing.
By offering the supercomputing platform as a service, and bringing the benefits of a platform that has historically been out of reach for most enterprises, CRL has the potential to accelerate design and research, and revolutionize a new industry. Similar to what Tata Motors has done with the launch of Nano, can another Tata group company blaze a trail and create a new market? Watch this space!
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