The inspiration is simple: an Apollo guidance computer's CPU was as powerful as a modern scientific calculator. Today's smart devices are millions of times more powerful, yet they're mostly idle. Ramanujan helps utilize this power for scientific advancement.
What is Ramanujan? Ramanujan is designed for distributed computation. Unlike platforms like BOINC, which often require project-specific clients, Ramanujan offers a universal interpreter. Project owners submit their code in the Ramanujan language, and participating devices, having installed the Ramanujan client once, can execute any submitted computation.
The interpreter is written in C++ and demonstrates significant performance gains:
~14% faster than CPython for a Gradient Descent algorithm (~350ms vs ~410ms).
Over 20X faster than MATLAB for a Whale Optimization Algorithm (2.5 sec vs 55 sec for optimizing 10 functions).
Key Features & Future Goals Performance: Faster than CPython and MATLAB for scientific computations.
Open-Source: MIT licensed project, code available on GitHub.
Device Compatibility: Binaries available for Android, macOS, and Ubuntu. Windows support is coming soon. Technically, any internet-connected device capable of basic arithmetic can run the interpreter once compiled for its architecture.
Ease of Use: A new portal (portal.ramanujan.dev) makes it easy for anyone to run Ramanujan jobs. An installer is also available for local desktop machines (Ubuntu, MacOS).
Our near-future goals are focused on Python compatibility:
Full Python Adoption: Allow state-of-the-art Python research code to run seamlessly on Ramanujan without modifications, by adopting Python constructs and grammar.
CFFI Integration: Enable associated CFFI code to run alongside Python scripts.
Expanded Device Support: Make clients available for a wider range of smart devices (fridges, washing machines, etc.) to maximize global compute contributions.
This project has the potential to significantly reduce e-waste and carbon emissions by leveraging existing hardware. We believe it can revolutionize computing for scientific research.
Get Involved! Ramanujan is in its nascent stage, and we're actively seeking contributors! Whether you're passionate about programming, compilers, distributed systems, or simply want to contribute to an impactful open-source project, we invite you to join us. Students are especially welcome to learn about compilers, distributed orchestration (our current service orchestrates thousands of computations with just a 2-core CPU!), and large-scale systems.
Checkout the project:
Portal: https://portal.ramanujan.dev
GitHub: https://github.com/Ramanujan-Computing/Ramanujan
Let's collaborate to push Ramanujan forward!