The significance of India’s mission to develop supercomputers

Sub : Sci

Sec: Awareness in AI & Computers

Context:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated three PARAM Rudra supercomputers on September 26, with a total investment of Rs 130 crore.
These supercomputers are designed to provide advanced facilities to India’s scientific community, supporting research across various fields including physics, cosmology, and earth sciences.

What is a Supercomputer?

Definition: A large computing system designed for complex scientific and industrial challenges.
Purpose: Handles time-consuming and computation-intensive tasks
Physical Structure: Occupies large rooms with multiple racks containing computer nodes with many cores
- IBM Blue Gene P supercomputer is one of the largest examples of parallel computing as of the year 2023.
Applications:
- Quantum mechanics, Weapons research, Weather forecasting, Climate research, Oil and gas exploration, Molecular dynamics, Physical simulations, Data analytics, Big data processing

The National Supercomputing Mission (NSM)

Launch: 2015
Goal: Build a grid of 70 powerful supercomputing systems
- These supercomputers were later networked on the National Supercomputing Grid over the National Knowledge Network (NKN).
Budget: Rs 4,500 crores
Duration: Seven years
Current Status: Two phases complete, third phase ongoing

Key Stakeholders

Applications

Climate and weather modeling, Aerospace engineering, Computational biology, Atomic energy simulations, National security and defence, Seismic analysis, Disaster management, Computational chemistry, Nanomaterials research, Astrophysics, Financial modeling

Achievements (2019-2023)

Technical Milestones

Total capacity: 24.83 petaFLOPS High-Performance Computing (HPC) machines commissioned
Installation of multiple systems:
- 7 systems > 1 petaFLOPS
- 8 systems: 500 teraFLOPS – 1 petaFLOPS
- 13 systems: 50-500 teraFLOPS

Supercomputer	Institute	Capacity and memory
PARAM Shivay	IIT BHU	837 teraFLOPS and a total memory of 54.5 TB
PARAM Shakti	IIT Kharagpur	1.66 petaFLOPS and a total memory of 103.125 TB
PARAM Brahma	Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune	1.75 petaFLOPS and a total memory of 56.8 TB
PARAM Yukti	Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore	1.8 petaFLOPS and a total memory of 52.416 TB
PARAM Sanganak	IIT Kanpur	1.67 petaFLOPS and a total memory of 104.832 TB
PARAM Pravega	Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore	3.3 petaFLOPS and a total memory of 245.945 TB
PARAM Seva	IIT Hyderabad	838 teraFLOPS and a total memory of 52.416 TB
PARAM Smriti	National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute, Mohali	838 teraFLOPS
PARAM Utkarsh	CDAC, Bangalore	838 teraFLOPS and a total memory of 52.416 TB
PARAM Ganga	IIT Roorkee	1.66 petaFLOPS and a total memory of 104.832 TB
PARAM Ananta	IIT Gandhinagar	838 teraFLOPS and a total memory of 52.416 TB
PARAM Porul	NIT, Trichy	838 teraFLOPS
PARAM Himalaya	IIT Mandi	838 teraFLOPS and a total memory of 52.416 TB
PARAM Kamrupa	IIT Guwahati	838 teraFLOPS and a total memory of 52.416 TB
PARAM Siddhi	AI CDAC, Pune	5.2 petaFLOPS and 210 petaFLOPS (AI)
PARAM Rudra	Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, Pune	1 petaFLOPS
	Inter-University Accelerator Centre, Delhi	838 teraFLOPS
	SN Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata	838 teraFLOPS

Infrastructure Development

Operational R&D Systems: SANGAM Testbed, PARAM Shrestha, PARAM Embryo, PARAM Neel, PARAM Spoorthi, PARAM Sampooran, Bioinformatics facility, System software lab

Human Resource Development:

1.75 lakh people trained in HPCs
5,930 experts from 100+ institutes utilized facilities
73.25 lakh high-performance computational queries executed
Learning centers established at: IIT Kharagpur, IIT Palakkad, IIT Chennai, IIT Goa, CDAC, Pune

Historical Significance

These challenges motivated India to develop indigenous, cost-effective technologies, with the NSM emerging as a crucial tool for technological self-reliance and soft power projection.

Source: IE