Super Computer For Thailand

[webfact]

Super computer for Thailand

Jirapan Boonnoon

The Nation

A consortium of leading technology organisations is in the process of developing grid computing in Thailand - high-performance computing systems that will be capable of coping with huge amounts of data, to support research, e-science, or an e-science infrastructure.

The organisations, calling themselves the National e-Science Infrastructure Consortium, include the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec), Chulalongkorn University, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thon Buri, Suranaree University of Technology and the Hydro and Agro Informatics Institute.

Nectec director Pansak Sirirutchatapong said the consortium would develop infrastructure to support e-science, so that researchers and organisations would be able to analyse large amounts of data, such as that from projects in genomics, weather analysis, water management, agriculture, nanotechnology and biotechnology. This will elevate and enhance the country's scientific knowledge base and create social and economic benefits.

Nectec plans to provide 240-core CPU computing to support the project by the end of this year and to increase that to a 512-core CPU in the future.

Chulalongkorn University rector Pirom Kamol-Ratanakul said the grid-computing consortium would prepare infrastructure for research and development as a starting point for the transfer of knowledge and human-resources-related science and technology, and expand into the education and services sectors in the future.

King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi rector Booncharoen Sirinaovakul said his university's role would involve developing the infrastructure and software for grid computing, increasing the performance of the system and applying it to support engineering development.

Suranaree University of Technology's rector Prasart Suebka said that the consortium was not only creating the potential for scientific research and development in the country, but was also joining with the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, which would be useful to this research and development.

The director of the Hydro Informatics Division of the Hydro and Agro Informatics Institute, Royol Chitradon, said the consortium would be able to share the knowledge base as a resource, create a researcher network and cluster related science and technology among its members.

-- The Nation 2011-10-06

[woodyleonhard]

A credible effort from a capable group. Kudos.

[olivier2553]

It would be an interesting news if Kasetsart University had not launched the Thai National Grid Center (thaigrid.net) back in 2005, with over 250 *nodes* and over 1000 *cores* distributed to over 15 universities...

[MaiChai]

I do this for a living. Its hardly rocket science to set this up. There are a number of commerical and free ways to do this. Oil companies and chip developers are regularly setting up these types of infrastructure. 240 cores is nothing. Regular Intel cpus have 8/12/16 cores and then if you have two processor slots thats 32 cores and then four processors thats 64 cores. So if you have about 10 servers thats 640 cores. One of my recent clients has over 5000 cores. So wheres the story?

[Gers1873]

Headline is a bit misleading as they are not developing a 'super computer'. They are developing a computer grid a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal.

“Distributed” or “grid” computing in general is a special type of computing that relies on complete computers (with onboard CPUs, storage, power supplies, network interfaces, etc.) all connected to a network.

This is in contrast to the traditional notion of a supercomputer which has many processors connected by a local high-speed computer bus.

Anyway everyone knows that HAL2000 was the last true super computer :jap:

[luudee]

Interesting. If they run it like they run the test of the country, this

thing will only work on Tuesday afternoons and only the odd numbered

cores will be available at any give time.

Just look how the internet providers are operating, and the national

"mai pen rai" attitude ! Perhaps the entire thing will melt down in the

first 2 hours of operations, because the thais decide that the cooling

requirements that the stupid farangs place on these systems are way

to over-rated ...

ohh ohh it is starting to rain, my internet connection will be going down

now for a few hours ....

cheers,

rudi