Computer System At IIT-M Is The Fastest & Powerful

IIT-Madras has a huge network of super computers installed at the campus in Chennai. It can be described as a super Cluster- a set of tightly connected computers that work together.

This cluster at IIT Madras has been declared the fastest among all educational institutions in the country. Among the TOP 500, a global project that details the most powerful known computer systems in the world, has ranked the new IBM Virgo Super Cluster at IIT-Madras as the 224th in the top 500.

This new system will be available to users, both professors and research scholars, across departments. Users can access it from wherever they are. Five years ago, the institute was the first IIT to set up a cluster with a computing power of 20 teraflops, but Virgo has a computing power of 97 teraflops. (A teraflop is one trillion floating point operations per second.)

P.B.Sunil Kumar, Professor (Physics) in charge, high performance computing said "It took almost 10 months for us to plan this. The cluster will be of great help to various ambitious projects at IIT-Madras. If a normal desktop CPU requires power of 300 units, this cluster works on 120 kilo units per hour and is spread across 36 Sq.Mtrs.

However, this is a great achievement made by IIT-Madras. And to be tagged as the "Fastest" is the reward of great hard work behind such great Cluster.