What can simulate blast tests for automobiles, aid designing of aircrafts, adhere the action of biologic discovery, simulate oil fields for multi-nationals and advice cede high-end 3D graphics? It's 'Eka' (Sanskrit for 'the one'), a supercomputer in Pune, India.

Set up by Computational Research Laboratories Ltd. (CRL), a wholly endemic accessory of Tata Sons Ltd.,

Eka is the better and fastest computational array accessible for bartering use in the world. Unveiled at the Supercomputing Conference in November 2007, it was ranked the fourth fastest in the world. The arrangement has a aiguille compute adeptness of 172 TeraFlops (one TeraFlops is the adeptness to do one abundance calculations per second) generated by 1800 compute servers alive in unison.

Most afresh acclimated for apprehension Yash Raj Film's Roadside Romeo - India's aboriginal all-embracing superior 3D action blur - over a amount of just 5 months, Eka can be acclimated to abate apprehension times for action frames, computer generated adumbration (CGI), beheld furnishings (vfx) and compositing in the domains of top end 3D modelling, 2D & 3D action and bold asset development.

As against to apprehension on accepted renderfarms, Eka gives an all-embracing aeon time abridgement by about 85%, according to centralized tests. For instance, with Roadside Romeo's trailer, breadth every anatomy took 35-40 account to cede on a renderfarm, the boilerplate apprehension time came down to 5 account at CRL. No admiration that the vfx-heavy The Lord Of The Rings was rendered on the world's fastest supercomputer in New Zealand.

But what absolutely is a supercomputer? It is about a amount of servers put calm talking to anniversary added at top speeds, an ambiance breadth one can run assorted computations in alongside and accordingly get added output. Spread over an breadth of 4000 sq ft, Eka is a supercomputer fabricated up of 1800 servers - commutual with top acceleration interconnect of 20 Gbps, additional a axial accumulator accommodation of 80 TeraBytes. The supercomputer is the assumption centermost of technology- temperatures are maintained in the ambit of 18-20 degrees, 25 engineers adviser its activity and blaze alarms and adeptness advancement are on standby 24x7.

So you accept 32 servers per rack; anniversary server with Bifold Intel Xeon cloister amount 3 GHz CPUs with 16 GB of RAM and a absolute of 57 busy racks. If you are acceptable at amount crunching here's some more- about anniversary server has 8 CPUs and anniversary arbor has 256 CPUs. The almost breadth of cables abutting the able affair is 14 km!

The making
Eka's enactment is actual for India as it is the country's aboriginal indigenously advised apple chic supercomputer. CRL started out as aggregation in 2006 and the architecture was accessible by August next year. In a appearance of abstruse ingenuity, the wizards at CRL accumulated the supercomputer and fabricated it anatomic in a abbreviate aeon of six weeks; accessible for its aboriginal LINPACK analysis in October 2007.

Eka clocked 117 TeraFlops in October 2007 and was declared the 4th fastest supercomputer in the apple and the fastest in Asia. In a consecutive analysis in June 2008, the cluster's acceleration was added by 15 Teraflops, a accomplishment able by optimizing on the accessible hardware.

Remote rendering
Who can use the supercomputer? Basically anyone with a acceptable broadband affiliation can use the arrangement by battlefront jobs accidentally and accomplish acceptable amount performance. CRL provides a bifold affidavit defended basic clandestine arrangement (VPN) adit for limited admission and a defended FTP for book upload/download. Post achievement of the antecedent setup, the job acquiescence and ecology action can all be done remotely. The axial accumulator accommodation of 80 TeraBytes is accessible to all the compute nodes and band back-ups are taken on a circadian base to ensure redundancy.

CRL accoutrement a allotment of the infrastructure, which includes computer nodes, accumulator and aggregate internet bandwidth, as per the user requirements. The user is accustomed complete ascendancy to his amplitude to ensure aegis and integrity. Users accept a best of selecting amid assorted operating systems including Windows and Linux. Since CRL has the adeptness to accommodate an on-demand bandwidth - alignment amid 50-100 Mbps to accredit barter to accidentally upload and download huge abstracts files - consumers can accept admission to a top achievement accretion ability about from their desktops.

CRL's audience cover Tata Elxsi VCL, Tata Motors, National Aerospace Laboratories, Advinus' Pharmaceutical, ISRO and others in the automotive, aerospace, activity sciences and action sectors. For animation, CRL supports Maya 7.0, 8.5 and 2008; Renderman; Studio 1.0.1 and ProServer 13.5.4; Smedge Job Manager; Mental Ray; Shave and Haircut; 3DS Max 2009 and XSi 7.0.

As added and added action and assembly studios account of Eka's top computational prowess, the approaching for Indian action seems bright, technologically, at least.