IEEE Event: High Performance Computing - Vipin Chaudhary, CEO CRL August 14, 2010

omputation Research Laboratories (CRL) is the Pune-based company from the Tatas which built the Eka supercomputer. Eka was the 4th fastest when it launched a few years back, but has now dropped to 33rd; nevertheless, it remains one of the fastest private (i.e. not funded by any government) supercomputers in the world.

Earlier this year, Dr. Vipin Chaudhary took over as the CEO of CRL. I assume this marks a change in direction for CRL. Earlier, the focus was on building Eka, which required lots of cutting edge research in hardware, software, and facilities among other things. During that phase it was developed and run by academics (CRL was started with the help of Dr. Narendra Karmarkar, and most of the senior executives in CRL were ex-IIT-Bombay professors. Now, however, it is likely that they’re looking for a return on the investment, and would like to start marketing high performance computing services using Eka. They have a team working on high performance infrastructure and applications using the Eka hardware, and being a purely private company, are in a unique position to offer their hardware, software and services to companies who might be interested in supercomputing applications (think airplane design and modeling (e.g. somebody like Boeing), or car design (e.g. for in-house use like Tata Motors)). Dr. Chaudhary, who relocated from the US for this role, has been earlier involved with two startups (Corio, acquired by IBM in 2005) and Cradle Technologies (2000-2003), in addition to being an associate professor at SUNY Buffalo. Thus the credentials he brings, specifically his strong technical and business background in this area, are impressive.

CRL, is working on some of the most complex technologies in Pune. For that reason alone, any techie in Pune should be interested in this talk.