President Droupadi Murmu inaugurates ‘PARAM KAMRUPA’ Supercomputer facility at IIT Guwahati

Tags: Science and Technology State News

President of India, Droupadi Murmu, inaugurated ‘PARAM KAMRUPA’ Supercomputer facility and a high-power active and passive component laboratory of  at Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati on 13 October, 2022. 

Important facts

• The President inaugurated the Dhubri Medical College and Hospital, and laid the foundation stone of regional institutes of the National Institute of Virology at Dibrugarh in Assam and Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh.

• She urged the science and technology institutions to lay emphasis on research and technology.

• The program was also addressed by Assam Governor Professor Jagdish Mukhi, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Bharati Praveen Pawar.

About ‘PARAM KAMRUPA’ Supercomputer

• PARAM Kamrup, a one of its kind supercomputer in the North East region, has been set up under the National Supercomputing Mission.

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

• It will provide advanced computing, healthcare techniques along with solutions for many issues to this region.

• Many components of this supercomputer are indigenously developed.

• Such technological development will make India a world leader in super computing and enhance India's capability in solving the challenges of the country as well as the world.

• The National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) has deployed Supercomputer PARAM Ganga at IIT Roorkee in March 2022.

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.