High Power Computing systems being deployed at 9 institutions

Launched in 2015, the ambitious Rs 4,500-crore project is led jointly by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Department of Science and Technology.

The second phase of the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) will be completed by September this year, taking India’s total computational capacity to 16 Petaflops.

The mission aims at creating a powerful supercomputing capability for the country and offer powerful computational facilities to boost research. The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) were entrusted to spread head the seven-year mission, ending in 2022. A National Knowledge Network (NKN), a grid, will connect 70 supercomputers across 75 research institutions with over a thousand researchers using this facility.

“Computational infrastructure is being installed at nine premier institutions and with the completion of phase II in September this year, the country’s computing power will be 16 Petaflops,” stated an official statement released recently.

In October last year, CDAC had inked MoUs with IITs — Madras, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Roorkee, Mandi, Gandhinagar, Goa, Palakkad — along with IISc, National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute and NIT, Thiruchirapalli — where a High Power Computing (HPC) system in each institute is currently being installed.

So far, over 4,500 people have been trained in HPC and further training in Artificial Intelligence will be held at special NSM nodal centres established at four IITs — Kharagpur, Madras, Goa and Palakkad.

In the first phase, PARAM Shivay, PARAM Shakti, PARAM Brahma, PARAM Yukti and PARAM Sanganak were deployed at IIT (BHU), IIT Kharagpur, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, and Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Research.