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.'"
Or (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, we could call it what everyone else is calling it. Grid computing or sometimes cloud computing.
Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
My uncle used to work for Minnesota Supercomputer Center and that's how he explained it to me; seemed pretty simple to my 12-year-old mind back then.
Everything old is new again (Score:3, Insightful)
Supercomputing as a service is nearly as old as computers are. Granted they were called mainframes.
Frankly I'm amused at how we seem to be regressing 30 years. I expect any day to see dumb terminals and a prognostication that soon the world will need only a few [cloud] computers.
Re:Or (Score:4, Insightful)
It's always been my biggest issue with outsourcing: I don't want to work with people who can't communicate well with others on my team. Nothing against the developers, but they're going to have to change if they want to continue to compete.
Better word? (Score:3, Insightful)
For want of a better word? Um, guys, we have a better word for it: timesharing service bureau. We came up with it back in the 60s to describe a business that bought these hugely powerful, hugely expensive things called "mainframes" and sold access to them to customers. Customers could load their software and data onto the TSB's mainframes and run their programs there, paying for only the compute time they needed as they needed it. The TSB would also charge per kilobyte per month for disk storage (data and programs) and per minute for terminal connect time. Replace "mainframe" with "supercomputer" and you've got this new service (minus the connect-time charges since we're no longer using dial-up modems).
Re:In all seriousness (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a legal expert, so I'm honestly asking: if you give storm your money and they don't give you the services you pay for, what recourse do you have?
Don't buy their services in the future? No different than my legal recourse against any giant multinational corporation, that is, none other than don't shop there again.
Note that organized crime tends toward providing services that require repeat business. Consider their offering prostitution instead of mail order brides, or addictive drugs instead of prescription antibiotics. Even "one time scams" are actually run multiple times. So this is not exactly a new business arrangement for crooks. Isolated little trades between folks that never interact again only happen in movies and RS GTA games.
The way to run that deal, is here's 10% of the money, you get more money after you process 10% of the data, repeat nine times.
To get around the funding rules, well, that is pretty much the definition of a money laundering shell company. Regarding the original article, how does the original author know this is not the case, unless he went on site and physically touched working hardware, preferably with witnesses, etc? Maybe those guys actually wrote the ....
Finally the thing I never understood about "supercomputer as a service", despite hearing about it for literally decades, is "everyone knows" that a supercomputer is merely a way to turn a compute bounded problem into an IO bounded problem. And nothing has worse IO bandwidth and latency than an outsourced service. Its great for problems that don't require any data, but what are those problems? Does the tiny little part of the solution space where it makes sense, generate enough profits to keep "supercomputer as a service" in business? My guess is, no, not long term.