A Case for PARAM Shavak: Ready-to-Use and Affordable Supercomputing Solution

High Performance Computing (HPC) Systems are usually large systems which require specialized infrastructure. For a variety of small time users, who need performance of the parallel computing for their applications, such systems are unaffordable and inaccessible for a number of reasons. Even to setup a small state-of-the-art HPC system, such users would require vast efforts and expertise to design system specifications and to identify and install system software, tools and user applications. Also, going through such process would consume time and can be expensive. Clearly, there is a requirement of a small and low-cost ready-to- use HPC system which can be straightway put to utilization by end-users. In this paper, we present a case of a small, affordable and personalized supercomputing solution named PARAM Shavak [8, 9] which offers ready-to-use supercomputing-in-a-box solution based on commercial off-the-shelf HPC hardware resources. This solution is aimed as a support tool for research, design and development — often related to the education or small time designers. The solution is so architected that it provides scalability and power efficiency. We also discuss the uniqueness of our solution compared to several related initiatives which have been around and show its efficacy.