Supercomputer for rental --- any takers for research / university / what rental commercially possible with LINUX
Hi, Suppose I had a 150 TB / 74 CPU dual quad Intel on Rental.Connected by dual Ethernet of 1.0 Gigabits second. Would it help advance research in India ? Would new pharma drugs come out of it ? Should it be given to students say at the rental of Rs 500 a month/Rs 1000 a month (they can easily afford that from their UGC scholarships ---- what max can I charge for it). In 2 years time it wouldn't cost much. And it would generate tonnes of parallel programmers.
Currently, would it be good for high-tech research all over India/third world countries all over the world ---------------- can such a super-computer be used for destruction/ I say NOT.
This would spur tremendous research in the next 10 years as Universities churn out people over a Beowulf cluster.
Erach
Suppose I had a 150 TB / 74 CPU dual quad Intel on Rental.Connected by dual Ethernet of 1.0 Gigabits second. Would it help advance research in India ? Would new pharma drugs come out of it ?
This is exactly what Computational Research Labs (CRL India) already do! And it's all on top of GNU/Linux. BTW, it's nowhere near as cheap as you proposed, to keep the system running. The power-bill alone will run up nicely (remember you need good cooling too), and where h/w costs can go down, power costs are sure to go up.
For students, it would probably be easier/cheaper/more_instructive to set up clusters on networked labs in their colleges (at least that's what we did). It's pretty easy over a standard(NFS+NIS) installation. IMO, if your project actually needs a serious cluster, the educational institute should shell out good money for it. The idea definitely has merit ... hopefully it's time will come soon.
Regards, farazs
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Erach -
Faraz Shahbazker