Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda now has 11 supercomputers after the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad gifted one worth about Rs 2 crore, installed at the university computer centre. The gift adds major computing power to the university's research facilities.
The machine has six nodes, each with two 2.30 GHz processors, 24 CPU cores and 256 GB RAM. Each node does 883 billion calculations per second, and combined the machine does 5.2 trillion calculations per second.
Inside the machine
Each blade has 144 CPU cores and 1.5 TB RAM, and each node has a 900 GB hard disk. The Physical Research Laboratory had used the machine since 2015, before offering it to the university.
How the gift came about
Research Cell Director Prof P K Jha said the Physical Research Laboratory offered the machine after learning of the university's research work. The laboratory decided the machine could serve the university's researchers better than staying in its own stores.
What it will be used for
The machine will support research in physics, chemistry, material science, computational modelling and artificial intelligence. Researchers working on complex simulations and large data sets will be able to run their work faster and at larger scale.
The university may extend access to outside scholars, though that is still under consideration. If opened up, the machine could serve researchers beyond the university as well.
A growing fleet
The university got its first supercomputer from the Gujarat government about five years ago, then nine more from IIT Bombay and the Anusandhan Research Foundation for the physics department. The gifted machine from the Physical Research Laboratory takes the count to 11.
