Table of Contents
The News
- The Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar have jointly unveiled a new supercomputer in the second phase of the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) of the Union Government. The supercomputer named Param Anant is capable of offering a peak performance of 838 Teraflops.
- A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between IIT Gandhinagar and Center for Advanced Computing Development (C-DAC) on 12th October, 2020 for setting up this 838 Teraflops supercomputing facility under NSM.
What is Supercomputing?
- Supercomputing technology comprises supercomputers, the fastest computers in the world. Supercomputers are made up of interconnected, I/O systems, memory and processor cores.
- Unlike traditional computers, supercomputers use more than one central processing unit (CPU). These CPUs are grouped into compute nodes, comprising a processor or a group of processors—symmetric multiprocessing (SMP)—and a memory block.
How fast is supercomputing?
- Supercomputing is measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS).
- Petaflops are a measure of a computer’s processing speed equal to a thousand trillion flops.
- 1-petaflop computer system can perform one quadrillion (1015) flops.
- Note: Supercomputers can be one million times more processing power than the fastest laptop.
FYI
National Supercomputing Mission
- Initially, India showcased its talent on building supercomputers at low cost with its PARAM series. To further enhance its capacity and to meet requirements, Government of India launched National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) in 2015.
- Under NSM, the plan was to connect R&D institutions and academic institutions in the country using a supercomputing grid with more than 70 high performance computing facilities. Spread over the period of seven years the estimated cost of this mission is Rs. 4,500 crores.
- Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) jointly guides the mission along wth C-DAC as major partner.
National Supercomputing Mission
- Phase 1 – Plan was to install 6 supercomputers with 30% value additions done in India.
- Phase 2- Started in April 2021 aimed at manufacturing supercomputers in the country with an indigenous software stack. Multiple supercomputers are also being installed during this phase.
- Phase 3- Focus is on design and manufacturing in the country. Phase 3, has also been initiated in 2021 and is expected to take computing speed to 45 PF.
National Supercomputing Mission
Supercomputers Under NSM
PARAM ANANTA
- The PARAM ANANTA supercomputing facility is established under Phase 2 of the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM). The majority of the components used to build this system have been manufactured and assembled within the country. This includes the indigenous software stack developed by C-DAC, in line with the Make in India initiative.
- According to Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), the supercomputer consists of a mixed set of CPU and GPU nodes along with high throughput storage and high bandwidth memory modules. This display is also said to offer direct contact liquid cooling technology to increase efficiency.
Benefits of PARAM ANANTA
- The Param Ananta Supercomputing Facility will be able to support IIT Gandhinagar in pursuing research and development activities in multidisciplinary domains of science and technology at the Institute, including, but not limited to, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data science, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), bio-engineering for genome sequencing and DNA studies, computational biology and bioinformatics used in prediction and detection of gene networks. It can help atomic and molecular sciences to comprehend the binding of drugs to a particular protein.
- According to sources, 60 percent of Param Anant’s capacity will be utilized by IIT Gandhinagar and the rest will be available to educational institutions for various research.
FYI
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