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IEEE -VESIT Student Branch

As part of its student branch activities, the IEEE - VESIT Student Branch conducted its second Industrial Visit since its inception, from 17 Sept. 1998 to 20 Sept. 1998 at Pune, in Maharashtra, India. The visit was organized and managed completely by the student officers of the IEEE - VESIT Student Branch, and they were assisted by the Branch Counselor, Prof. J A Gokhale. The group of 46 IEEE student members that were visiting the companies comprised students from the Second Year (Sophomore) to Final Year (Senior) students. These students were also accompanied on the entire visit by three faculty members:

1. Mr. Pagey

2. Ms. Mrinalini Deshpande

3. Ms. Gresha Bhatia.

The industries that were visited were:

a. Center for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC)

b. Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT)

c. Tata Electric and Locomotive Companies (TELCO)

An entire day was assigned to visiting each of the three companies. CDAC was visited on Day One, GMRT on Day Two and TELCO on Day Three. Please turn over for greater details of the visit to each of the Companies

DAY 1: A SUMMARY OF THE VISIT TO CDAC

The visit to the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing or CDAC began at 10:30 am on 18 Sept 1998, as scheduled. The agenda for the day, included visiting PARAM 10000, India's first indigenous supercomputer, and currently, the world's second fastest supercomputer, besides viewing some applications that would require supercomputers, and visiting the super and parallel computer sections.

Dr. V C V Rao, a senior computer scientist, guided the group around CDAC's "Science and Technology Park" and was the host during the entire visit . Dr. Rao, first introduced the basic concepts of super and parallel computing and the essential differences between them.

Dr. Rao first spoke about the CRAY machines, which were the first supercomputers to be built. He then gave a brief talk on the history of supercomputers and the origin of supercomputing research in India, and also guided us in taking a look at the PARAM series of supercomputers, the predecessors of PARAM 10000, namely the PARAM 8000, PARAM 8600, and PARAM 9000.

He spoke about the different considerations to be taken into effect, when designing a supercomputer, such as network scaling, message passing considerations, distributed architectures and shared memory concepts.

PARAM 10000

Dr. Rao then went on to explain the architectures used in supercomputers and then clarified that the PARAM series upto PARAM 9000, were indigenously developed supercomputer architectures, and then pointed out that the PARAM 10000 was infact a parallel machine, that was built by assembling widely available workstations.

The PARAM 10000 thus, consists of around a 160 Sun UltraSparc workstations, each of which have four processors, and around 128 Mb of shared memory, and each of these 160 workstations are connected by a high speed network.

Therefore, although the computer architecture for the individual workstations were not of Indian make, the fast network connecting them, forming the entire workhorse of the PARAM 10000, was developed purely out of Indian research.

PARAMNet

Dr. Rao also talked about the ongoing development and current area of research in CDAC - PARAMNet, which is to be CDAC's high speed 100 Mbps equivalent of the fast Ethernet and compared it with the other high speed networks available commercially.

Applications of the PARAM 10000

Finally Dr. Rao showed us a few applications of the PARAM 10000.They were:

A geophysical data was collected by sending the sound waves into the earth's surface and a color map of the results was made depending upon the speed of the sound waves in the crust. This was done for a volume of 60 km. x 60 km. x 5 km. and the data was processed at the PARAM 10000 super computer in order to arrive at a readable graphical map in 3 dimensions. What was visible on the computer screen was the map created for a vertical slice of the entire volume. This data processing took more that 13 hours for the Super Computer PARAM 10000 to process and each such slice of processed data occupied some 8 GB of memory space. This data is then read by the geologists to find out the existence of any underground source of mineral oil as well as the existence of any faults in the crust shelves.

Certain data relating to the entire Lake Superior was read and its processing was also done at PARAM 10000. The entire data processing was distributed among all the processors and a map was created showing which area is covered by which processor. Thus it could be seen that the entire data processing operation was efficiently organized and carried out by using the 'parallel data processing' technique.

DAY 2: A SUMMARY OF THE VISIT TO GMRT

 The visit to the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope or GMRT began at 11:00 am on 19 Sept 1998, as scheduled. The agenda for the day, included visiting the various 43m wide radio telescope antennas at the GMRT, besides seeing the actual data that was recorded from the observations. The GMRT is located at a place called Narayangaon, about 80 Kms. (about 130 miles) from Pune.

Mr. Suresh Sabhapathi of the observation center at GMRT project site was the host for the visit. He began the visit with a brief lecture on Radio Astronomy and its origins. He then gave an insight into the peculiar shape of the radio telescopes formation, the meaning of the word "Giant Meterwave" and finally concluded the talk with the reasons for selection of Narayangaon as an ideal site for the telescope.

The remaining portion of the visit consisted of visiting the "Dish" shaped telescopic antennas, and viewing the actual data obtained from observations.

Radio Astronomy and its Origins

Mr.Suresh Sabhapathi introduced the group to the widely used Astronomical unit called "Jansky" .He told us that, in the 1930's an astronomer by the name Carl Jansky once focussed a miniature radio telescope towards the center of the galaxy which is about 20 billion light years away from the Earth . He received prominent radio waves from there having frequency 1420 MHz (21 cm. Wavelength) which was later found to be that from some hydrogen containing stars. This led to further research and a unit called 1 Jansky was introduced which is used in astronomy and it is equal to 1 x 10 e ^-26 Watts/sq. m/Hz.

Carl Jansky suggested that it would be possible to obtain more useful knowledge of the galaxies around us, if we could obtain data in the form of radio waves rather than by optical means. References were made to the Hubble telescope, where information is obtained by means of optical methods, and this was compared with the information obtained from radio waves from space. Since these radio waves have their frequencies to the order of meters we also call them 'metrewave'. By the basic principles of Physics we know that to capture these waves sufficient enough to form a decipherable image, we need a telescope with an aperture of comparable size. This of course was not possible with the conventional telescopes, and so it led to the birth of the 'Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope'.

Mr. Sabhapati stressed on the point that radio waves would provide an equally important amount of information, because of the fact that they do not diminish as easily as light does. He talked about Doppler shifts, Red shifts, and correlated the need for observation of Doppler shifts with the "BIG-BANG" theory. He emphasized that the following frequencies were the ones that were most commonly looked for, and filtered

1. 1420 MHz (Hydrogen Line)d. 233 MHz

b. 610 MHz e. 150 MHz

3. 327 MHz (Deuterium Line)f. 50 MHz

Insight into shapes and sizes of the Radio Telescope formation and working of the GMRT

The GMRT project actually consists of 30 distributed radio telescopes over a 625 Sq. Km area, in a " Y " formation, and a 1 Sq. Km "square" are at the center of the " Y ". On each arm of the "Y" there are dish antennas, at varying distances from each other. Each antenna, is 43m. in diameter and rests on a concrete tower. Within the 1 Sq. Km quadrangle, there are around 12 - 14 such dishes placed randomly. The reason for this formation and the large diameter of each antenna, he explained, was to increase the resolving power of the Radio Telescope.

He noted that resolution can be increased by not only increasing the diameter of the antenna, but also by increasing the wavelength of the waves being observed. The aim therefore, was to observe "meter-waves" and this, in turn is what was used to coin the name "Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope" for the project.

Mr. Sabhapathi also explained that the peculiar shape of the Radio Telescope formation was chosen so that the resolution obtained from all the combined set of antennas was comparable to that which would be obtained if a single antenna of such a large diameter (around 25 Km) were to be used. He also mentioned that the surface of the dish was not made of a single sheet of metal, but instead consisted of a wire mesh, where the separation between the wires was so small compared to the wavelength of the radiowave being observed, that error in readings would account for less than 1%.

Mr. Sabhapathi went on to explain that Narayangaon had been chosen as a site for the project after many considerations and previous attempts in setting up radio telescopes at alternative sites. He mentioned that the site for the project had the following advantages over the other sites that had been considered:

a. The site was surrounded on almost all sides by mountains, which managed to effectively block most of the industrial disturbances that could cause error in measurements.

b. The site was quite remote and far away from highways and traffic, which also served to reduce the effective disturbance that would have been otherwise present elsewhere.

c. One of the more important points, he noted, was the fact that the place was quite near the equator, and therefore ionosphere studies could be easily carried out. He added that the inclination of the ground was close to l1 degrees , and this played a significant role in the "safe position" of the dish antenna, when unused.

Visit to the "dish shaped" telescopic antennas

Once the lecture was concluded, Mr. Sabhapathi proceeded to show an antenna to the group, and to explain the electronics present in the antenna room. He then demonstrated how the antenna is moved when it has to be focussed at different positions in the sky. He also explained that each antenna had a 270 degrees of rotation while in "roll movement" and 360 degrees of rotational movement while swiveling.

He then showed the group, the uplink module from the observation center to the antenna room, and the downlink module from the antenna room to the observation center. Each of these modules were connected by underground fiber optic cables. He also showed the electronic filter sections that were used in the antenna room.

Mr. Sabhapati then presented the group with the actual data that was obtained after observation of "pulsars", back at the observatory. This was followed by a small recorded talk on pulsars and their observations using the GMRT. Finally, he concluded the visit by taking the group to the computer center of the GMRT, where he showed the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) performing computers and the electronic filtering equipment.

DAY 3: SUMMARY OF THE VISIT TO TELCO

TELCO, is situated at a place called Pimpri - Chinchwad, about 20 Km (32 Miles) from Pune. TELCO is an automobile engineering company, that has a large market share in the sale of trucks, and light commercial vehicles. TELCO prides itself on its excellent vehicle design, and on the reliability of the vehicles that it manufactures.

The agenda for the day included visiting the Electronics center, visiting the industrial robots in the assembly lines of the "Sumo", and the "Safari", two of the TELCO manufactured vehicles. Besides this, the vehicle test track, commonly known as the "Torture Track" was also to be visited, where the design and safety of a TELCO heavy motor vehicle would be tested. Mr. Karandikar, HRD Manager of TELCO was the host for the day. The first place to be visited was the torture track. A demonstration of the usefulness of the TELCO 490, a heavy motor vehicle was given, after which, the Electronics Centre was visited.

The Electronics Centre, is the place where the instrumentation for the assembly lines of TELCO vehicles and the design of the electronic systems that interact with the industrial robots of the assembly lines, takes place. Besides this, the Electronics Centre is also responsible for design of various systems that are required in automobile engineering, namely

a. Fault Testing and Tolerance Systems

b. Engine Design Testing Systems

c. Crash Test Evaluation Systems

d. Industrial Robot Interaction Systems

Finally, the assembly lines of the "TATA Sumo" and the "TATA Safari", two vehicles manufactured by TELCO were visited.. The main feature of this visit was to look at the industrial robots there, and to get a comprehensive understanding of their working. The Industrial Robots present were mainly used for high precision welding and assembly of delicate portions of the vehicle, such as the undercarriage and the engines.

These robots are manufactured by Hitachi. Ltd., a Japanese Electronic Company. Each robot has a 6 degrees of freedom, allowing it great flexibility to reach out to almost any portion of the vehicle. The electronic system that controls the robots is so designed that each robot is instructed when it is to carry out its job. The "fingers" of the robots consist of welding units which carry out "spot welding" of the portions of the undercarriage.

The "platform mounted industrial robots" were responsible for transfer of one portion of the vehicle to the succeeding section, where more portions of the vehicle would be assembled. The industrial robots are so efficient that the assembly time of an entire vehicle is approximated at two and a half minutes, by TELCO.