It all seems to add up at MSU

VADODARA, Nov 7: For once, all the numbers add up for M S University. The teachers and students of its Applied Mathematics department cla...

VADODARA, Nov 7: For once, all the numbers add up for M S University. The teachers and students of its Applied Mathematics department claim to have developed a unique software that will make child8217;s play of huge computational jobs. Christened Anulib8217; 8212; the Anu8217; comes from Anupam, the master computer at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, and the lib8217; from library 8212; the rudimentary software was installed at the department three months ago by experts from BARC and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Pune.

The software, however, was conceived, designed and executed prior to that by scholars of M S University8217;s Computer Centre and the department. Further development will find it indispensable in complicated and delicate jobs like weather predictions, image processing and time-series analyses of national import.

Anulib comprises four computers fitted out with ethernet cards, which can be instructed to work simultaneously on huge number-crunching operations.

The Applied Maths department was also planning to develop a library of parallel alogarithms and such routines, which could be used by the apex Ramp;D bodies and educational institutions, department readers V D Pathak and D C Vakaskar and Centre director S Ramamohan said.

8220;We are expecting a positive response to a project proposal we have sent to the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India8221;, Ramamohan said. 8220;If the DST approves of the project and backs it up with Rs 25 lakh, the library might come in handy for all agencies that have to deal with huge scientific computations and don8217;t possess such a network.8221;

According to Vakaskar, the scientific headway was significant also because the development had cost the university nothing. 8220;It is only the expertise of the dedicated staff and the students who planned the project, and the BARC and CDAC experts, who did not charge anything for their services, that made this possible8221;, Pathak said, adding that the computers themselves were part of the department8217;s extant laboratory.