Tata Comm, A*STAR, Obsidian team up to improve supercomputer infrastructure

Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) Computational Research Centre, Obsidian Strategics, and Tata Communications have come together to work on a platform that is aimed at leading future global supercomputer developments in architectures, algorithms, software and applications.

They will demonstrate “world’s first” transmission of data at a speed of 100 Gbits/s across the Pacific via subsea optical cables at the Supercomputing 2014 conference.

This demonstration will deliver data 10x faster than previously recorded transmission speeds between Asia and North America, the companies said.

The Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network will provide the connectivity within Singapore, while Tata Communications will contribute the transpacific capacity on its wholly-owned subsea cables TGN-IA, connecting Singapore to Japan. From there, the connectivity will continue on Tata Communications’ TGN-P across the Pacific to Seattle, where the connection will run to New Orleans using Century Link’s transcontinental fiber, where SCinet will terminate the circuit at the A*STAR booth.

To demonstrate the feasibility and lasting value of the platform, A*STAR will overlay an architecture called the InfiniCortex initiative. This initiative is aimed at developing and deploying coordination and scheduling algorithms capable of leveraging the global InfiniBand network to efficiently harness remote supercomputing equipment on single tasks.

Obsidian will provide the Longbow devices that transparently interface supercomputer InfiniBand local area networks with encrypted links across standard WAN infrastructure, Crossbow devices that route traffic between InfiniBand subnets and BGFC, an enhanced subnet manager that coordinates the global InfiniBand fabric across multiple subnets.

Genius Wong, SVP, global network services, Tata Communications, said, “The power of supercomputing is on the rise - from speeding up complex data analytics to bringing an accurate, simple weather forecast. By providing the 100 Gbits/s transport services to this project, we hope to advance such initiatives and help realize the power of supercomputing regionally and globally.”