PARAM ANANTA Supercomputer commissioned at IIT, Gandhinagar

Tags: Science and Technology

A state-of-the-art supercomputer PARAM ANANTA under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM), was dedicated to the nation at IIT Gandhinagar.

• NSM is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and Department of Science and Technology (DST).

• About PARAM ANANTA

• This high power supercomputer can process 838 lakh crore calculations per second.

• It is capable of offering peak performance of 838 teraflops.

• The facility has been set up under Phase 2 of the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM).

• A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between IIT Gandhinagar and Center for Development in Advanced Computing (C-DAC) on 12 October 2020 to set up this 838 teraflops supercomputing facility under NSM.

• It is equipped with a mix of CPU nodes, GPU nodes, High Memory nodes, High throughput storage and high performance Infiniband.

• It is based on direct contact liquid cooling technology to achieve high power utilization effectiveness and reduce operating costs.

• This facility will be of great benefit to IIT Gandhinagar to pursue Research and Development (R&D) activities in the multidisciplinary domain of Science and Technology.

• What are supercomputers?

• A supercomputer can perform high-level processing at a faster rate than a normal computer.

• They work together to perform complex operations that are not possible with normal computing systems.

• Fast speed and fast memory are the characteristics of supercomputers.

• The performance of a supercomputer is generally evaluated in petaflops.

• National Supercomputing Mission

• The National Supercomputing Mission was launched In 2015.

• The aim of the mission was to enhance the research capacities in the country to form a Supercomputing grid.

• It supports the government's vision of 'Digital India' and 'Make in India' initiatives.

• The mission is being jointly operated by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

• It is implemented by Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune and IISc, Bengaluru.

• Some important facts about supercomputer

• China has the maximum number of supercomputers followed by the US, Japan, France, Germany, Netherlands, Ireland and the United Kingdom..

• India’s first supercomputer - PARAM 8000

• first supercomputer assembled indigenously - PARAM Shivay, installed in IIT (BHU)

• PARAM Shakti, PARAM Brahma, PARAM Yukti, PARAM Sanganak are some name of india's supercomputers

• India's PARAM-Siddhi AI, has been ranked 63rd in the Top 500 list of most powerful supercomputers in the world.