Go back 10 years or so,and super computers were found locked up in some heavily guarded CIA maximum security Lab.The US government had hard and fast rules to curb the export of any components useful for building a super computer,and only the frienly nations were allowed top have the harware.Rogue nations like Pakistan have always been in the exclusion list. Now with the advancement of technology,supercomputers have become more and more common. Many universities and public institutins have succesfully built supercomputers from off the shelf components without any purpose built hardware.
With the GPU paching much more computational power than the common CPU,now many researchers are turning towards GPU for the next generatin High performance computing.
Here is one example where some dudes in Holland bought some gtx 295 and built a super computer.A desktop supercomputer. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2009/12/15/astra-builds-13-gpu-supercomputer/1
Both NVIDIA and ATI had been working on this concept and encouraging amature programers to download their development kits and come up with some thing useful. NVIDIA has their tesla series cards and CUDA "thing",and ATI has their ATI stream "thing" . Both CUDA and ATI stream are free to download and developers can fiddle around http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla_computing_solutions.html
http://developer.amd.com/gpu/atistreamsdk/pages/default.aspx
The question is,can we do it? The hardware is abundantly available.Specially ATI's 5870 graphics cards are packed with computing power upto 2.5 terra flops,and thats huge.The problem lies in harnessing this power via software.The softwares either dont exist or are very unstable at the moment.
The ATI and NVIDIA developers kits are all in C++,and there are many C++ programmers in Pakistan.Why not give it a go? May be one of our programmers develop the operating system required to convert a GPU into a super computer.
There are many profitable businesses operating on the basis of super computing in neighboring india,here is one example http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...allyas-Formula-1-cars/articleshow/5401413.cms
Other uses are material testing,weather forecast,medical imaging,defence and of course media editing,CAD and engineering designing.
There are many new softwares cominh in the market using GPU one example is http://www.insidepro.com/eng/egb.shtml , this uses CUDA to find lost passwords.A Ms Word,Excel password finder http://lastbit.com/gpu.asp Here is another software which uses both NVIDIA dn ATI cards for cracking the wireless router WEP keys,you may be able to use someone else's broadband http://www.elcomsoft.com/ewsa.html. Many companies such as Nero,cyberlink and others are churning out ATI stream and CUDA softwares for general consumers. http://www.nero.com/eng/moveit-nvidia-cuda.html
http://www.cyberlink.com/prog/compan...nt.do?pid=2158. Another fun software from nvidia is http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multime...A-Gelato.shtml. You can create your own animated movied using this software and NVIDIA card.
If someone got the right software,there are buyers.For example,this http://upload.cnet.com/?tag=ftr is a mighty good,and well known plateform to promote your software if you got one.
So there is a market,and GPU computing seems to be the way forward. With most of us on this forum being th eowners of NVIDIA or ATI GPUs,if we set aside some time for looking into CUDA and ATI stream,one of us may pioneer the first supercomputing private business in Pakistan.Difficult but not impossible.
Further reading http://gpgpu.org/
With the GPU paching much more computational power than the common CPU,now many researchers are turning towards GPU for the next generatin High performance computing.
Here is one example where some dudes in Holland bought some gtx 295 and built a super computer.A desktop supercomputer. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2009/12/15/astra-builds-13-gpu-supercomputer/1
Both NVIDIA and ATI had been working on this concept and encouraging amature programers to download their development kits and come up with some thing useful. NVIDIA has their tesla series cards and CUDA "thing",and ATI has their ATI stream "thing" . Both CUDA and ATI stream are free to download and developers can fiddle around http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla_computing_solutions.html
http://developer.amd.com/gpu/atistreamsdk/pages/default.aspx
The question is,can we do it? The hardware is abundantly available.Specially ATI's 5870 graphics cards are packed with computing power upto 2.5 terra flops,and thats huge.The problem lies in harnessing this power via software.The softwares either dont exist or are very unstable at the moment.
The ATI and NVIDIA developers kits are all in C++,and there are many C++ programmers in Pakistan.Why not give it a go? May be one of our programmers develop the operating system required to convert a GPU into a super computer.
There are many profitable businesses operating on the basis of super computing in neighboring india,here is one example http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...allyas-Formula-1-cars/articleshow/5401413.cms
Other uses are material testing,weather forecast,medical imaging,defence and of course media editing,CAD and engineering designing.
There are many new softwares cominh in the market using GPU one example is http://www.insidepro.com/eng/egb.shtml , this uses CUDA to find lost passwords.A Ms Word,Excel password finder http://lastbit.com/gpu.asp Here is another software which uses both NVIDIA dn ATI cards for cracking the wireless router WEP keys,you may be able to use someone else's broadband http://www.elcomsoft.com/ewsa.html. Many companies such as Nero,cyberlink and others are churning out ATI stream and CUDA softwares for general consumers. http://www.nero.com/eng/moveit-nvidia-cuda.html
http://www.cyberlink.com/prog/compan...nt.do?pid=2158. Another fun software from nvidia is http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multime...A-Gelato.shtml. You can create your own animated movied using this software and NVIDIA card.
If someone got the right software,there are buyers.For example,this http://upload.cnet.com/?tag=ftr is a mighty good,and well known plateform to promote your software if you got one.
So there is a market,and GPU computing seems to be the way forward. With most of us on this forum being th eowners of NVIDIA or ATI GPUs,if we set aside some time for looking into CUDA and ATI stream,one of us may pioneer the first supercomputing private business in Pakistan.Difficult but not impossible.
Further reading http://gpgpu.org/
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