37 supercomputers with 40 Petaflops computing power installed under NSM: Minister

New Delhi, Aug 21 (IANS) At least 37 supercomputers with a total computing power of 40 Petaflops have been installed (till August 12) under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM), as the government aims to achieve self-reliance and global leadership in supercomputing by giving access of state-of-the-art supercomputing facilities to researchers, addressing grand challenges, optimising investments, and enhancing global competitiveness in key areas of supercomputing technologies.

These systems are set up in leading institutions like IISc, IITs, C-DAC, R&D Labs and also in several academic institutions and research organisation in the tier 2 and 3 cities across the country.

The systems are being used efficiently, with most running at over 85 per cent capacity and many exceeding 95 per cent. These supercomputers have supported over 10,000 researchers, including more than 1,700 Ph.D scholars from over 200 academic and research institutions, said Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Jitin Prasada, in Lok Sabha.

“They have played a key role in advancing research in areas such as drug discovery, disaster management, energy security, climate modelling, astronomy, computational chemistry, fluid dynamics, and materials research. More than one (01) crore compute jobs have been completed, and as a result over 1,500 research papers have been published in reputed journals. Startups and MSMEs are also using these systems to boost their HPC-based projects,” the minister informed.

Under the NSM, an ecosystem has been established with the focused goal of achieving self-reliance in supercomputing, encompassing the design, development, and manufacturing of supercomputing server boards, as well as the creation of a complete system software stack and associated applications.

“India has now the capability of designing, developing and manufacturing supercomputing technologies indigenously. This approach is in line with the Prime Minister's vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat,” said the minister.

PARAM 'Rudra' supercomputers are built using indigenously designed and manufactured High-Performance Computing servers, known as "Rudra”, along with an indigenously developed system software stack.

“Rudra” Server is the first of its kind in India which is at par with globally available other HPC class Servers. These servers are being manufactured in India by local manufacturers, boosting local electronics industries.

In parallel, under the NSM, the “Trinetra” high-speed inter communication network between computer nodes has been developed and tested with speeds of 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps to enhance data transfer and communication between computing nodes, strengthening India’s supercomputing capabilities.

—IANS

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