India’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing Joins OpenPOWER to Spread HPC Education

By Dr. VCV Rao and Mr. Sanjay Wandheker

An open ecosystem relies on collaboration to thrive, and at the Centre for Advanced Computing (C-DAC), we fully embrace that belief.

C-DAC is a pioneer in several advanced areas of IT and electronics, and has always been a proactive supporter of technology innovation. It is currently engaged in several national ICT (Information and Communication Technology) projects of critical value to the Indian and global nations, and C-DAC’s thrust on technology innovation has led to the creation of an ecosystem for the coexistence of multiple technologies, today, on a single platform.

Driving National Technology Projects

Within this ecosystem, C-DAC is working on strengthening national technological capabilities in the context of global developments around advanced technologies like high performance computing and grid computing, multilingual computing, software technologies, professional electronics, cybersecurity and cyber forensics, and health informatics.

C-DAC is also focused on technology education and training, and offers several degree programs including our HPC-focused C-DAC Certified HPC Professional Certification Programme (CCHPCP). We also provide advanced computing diploma programs through the Advanced Computing Training Schools (ACTS) located all over India.

One of C-DAC’s critical projects is the “National Supercomputing Mission (NSM): Building Capacity and Capability“, the goal of which is to create a shared environment of the advancements in information technology and computing which impact the way people lead their lives.

Partnering with OpenPOWER

The OpenPOWER Foundation makes for an excellent partner in this effort, and through our collaboration, we hope to further strengthen supercomputing access and education by leveraging the OpenPOWER Foundation’s growing ecosystem and technology. And with OpenPOWER, we will develop and refine HPC coursework and study materials to skill the next generation of HPC programmers on OpenPOWER platforms with GPU accelerators.

In addition, CDAC is eager to explore the potential of OpenPOWER hardware and software in addressing some of our toughest challenges. OpenPOWER offers specific technology features in HPC research which include IBM XLF Compliers, ESSL libraries, hierarchical memory features with good memory bandwidth per socket, IO bandwidth, the CAPI interfaces with performance gain over PCIe and the potential of POWER8/9 with NVIDIA GPUs. These OpenPOWER innovations will provide an opportunity to understand performance gains for a variety of applications in HPC and Big Data.

Come Join Us

We’re very eager to move forward, focusing on exposure to new HPC tools on OpenPOWER-driven systems. CDAC plans to be an active member of the OpenPOWER community by making HPC software for science and engineering applications an open source implementation available on OpenPOWER systems with GPU acceleration.

To learn more about CDAC and to get involved in our work with OpenPOWER, visit us online at www.cdac.in. If you would like to learn more about our educational offerings and coursework, go to http://bit.ly/1Sgp4ix.