Indian groups join Intel's PlanetLab

The chipmaker said that the groups, the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Information Technology and the Roorkee-based Indian Institute of Technology, will test the performance of networking and distributed-computing protocols being developed as part of the PlanetLab program.

PlanetLab is an open, distributed network being used to try out new technologies in areas like distributed storage, network mapping, peer-to-peer systems, distributed hash tables and distributed query processing. The program operates at 156 sites worldwide. It is one of several research initiatives that Intel is working on in conjunction with universities and other academic groups.

The company said researchers from the two centers will work closely with those from Intel India. Additionally, workers at the Indian PlanetLab institutes will collaborate with those from other countries to solve technical and non-technical problems.

"PlanetLab creates a virtual laboratory that researchers around the world can use to develop novel Internet services, while at the same time exploring how to evolve the Internet to better support continued innovation," Frank Spindler, vice president of Intel's corporate technology group, said in a statement. "India will play a role in developing a new class of services and applications that are distributed over much of the Web and will affect the design of intelligent servers, network storage and network processors."