It's no ordinary feat achieved by Dr Srinidhi Varadarajan in
2003, who led 165 faculty members and students of Virginia Polytechnic to build
a supercomputer in a record-setting time of 3 months at a cost of just $5.2 mn-an
unbelievable price in the field of high-performance supercomputing. System X
represents a paradigm shift in supercomputing as most machines of this class
cost upward of $40 mn and take years to assemble. System X uses a high
performance switched communications fabric called Infiniband.
Dr Varadarajan's research is focused on transparent fault
tolerance for massively parallel supercomputers, scalable network emulation, and
routing algorithms for backbone IP networks. He is exploring the use of AI
techniques for multi-path routing protocols. Dr Varadarajan is the recipient of
CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, and is listed in the 2004
list of the world's 100 Top Young Innovators by Technology Review, MIT's
Magazine of Innovation.