Supercomputer As a Service 78
gubm writes "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.'"
Nothing new to see here (Score:5, Informative)
The idea is very old, and contrary to the article there are plenty of people offering similar services: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Rent-Your-Own-Supercomputer-for-2-77-per-Hour-82166.shtml [softpedia.com], http://www.hoise.com/primeur/00/articles/weekly/AE-PR-04-00-20.html [hoise.com], http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/4590/2/ [linuxplanet.com], etc.
Is their offering cheaper? Unfortunately the article didn't tell us.
Re:Um... (Score:1, Informative)
but cloud computing sounds so much sexier and companies love it that their customers will have a very hard time leaving
Not only not new - it never went away (Score:5, Informative)
Its not only nothing new, we never stopped renting high-performance computing time. In some cases, it's ancient supercomputers that aren't all that super any more, but that the applications are so large and difficult to port to other machines, we just kept using them.
Brett
Re:Everything old is new again (Score:2, Informative)