IBM, OpenPOWER team up for computing research facility at IIT Bombay

IBM and IIT Bombay have teamed up to open the first OpenPOWER Research Facility (OPRF) at IIT Bombay. This partnership is believed to drive the National Knowledge Network initiative by interconnecting all institutions of higher learning and research with collaborative research, knowledge sharing and high-speed data communication network.

“OPRF at IIT Bombay supports an open technology ecosystem for high-performance computing and its applications. OPRF gives opportunities to students, faculty and researchers to gain familiarity with OpenPOWER system features, and make contributions to the OpenPOWER foundation in terms of power processor, GPU acceleration, network adapters/switches and application codes. In terms of its objectives and activities, OPRF aligns well with the recently-launched National Supercomputing Mission of Government of India,” said Prof. P S V Nataraj, Professor and Principal Investigator, IIT Bombay.

Those not in the know, the OpenPOWER Foundation is a community co-founded in part by IBM, Nvidia and Mellanox. It was created to support open development on the POWER architecture. With the all-new OPRF, scientists, students, developers and enterprises (already a part of National Knowledge Network initiative) will be able to tap into the latest OpenPOWER-based infrastructure. This infrastructure includes POWER processor, Nvidia GPU accelerators and Mellanox networking solutions. It will allow PhD scholars, MTech and engineering students to tap into OPRF and build solutions around eGovernance, healthcare, education, agriculture and high-performance computing.

“Open collaboration is driving the next wave of innovation across the entire system stack, allowing clients and organisations to develop customised solutions to capitalise on today’s emerging workloads,’ said Monica Aggarwal, vice president, India Systems Development Lab (ISDL), IBM Systems.

“The OPRF will enable Indian companies, universities and government organizations to build technologies indigenously using the high-performance POWER processor, helping to drive the national IT agenda of India,” she added.