National Supercomputing Mission
National Supercomputing Mission, is a mission of the Government of India to boost the supercomputing capabilities of India. This mission consists of designing and manufacturing 73 supercomputers in India. These cluster of supercomputers will be connected to various academic and research institutions across India. This grid will be connected to the National Knowledge Network (NKN). This is a Rs 4,500 Crore project. In 2018, the Government of India awarded a contract to French company Atos to build supercomputers under this mission. Atos has collaborated with Indian partners in Chennai and Pune to build most of the required parts.
Candidates would find this topic to be of importance while preparing for IAS Exam.
What is the name of Indias’ First Supercomputer?
India’s first supercomputer was PARAM 8000. PARAM stood for Parallel Machine. It was developed by the Centre for Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in 1991, with a speed of 1 Gigaflop.
Which is India’s Fastest Supercomputer?
Currently, Pratyush and Mihir are the Fastest Supercomputers in India. These are the 2 High-Performance Computing Units (HPC) with a combined speed of 6.8 PetaFlops. Pratyush is established in Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune. Mihir is established in the National Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (NCMWF), Noida.
Pratyush and Mihir are used for the following applications.
- Weather forecasting
- Air quality
- Fishing
- To detect natural calamities
Which are the Nodal Agencies for Implementing National Supercomputing Mission?
Government of India departments and research institutions are part of the implementation.
- Department of Science and Technology (Government of India)
- Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY)
- Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC)
- Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
What will be the Applications of these Supercomputers?
Supercomputers can be used for many new-age applications. Few examples are given below.
- Weather forecasting
- Natural disaster predictions
- Drug discovery
- Space applications
- Aerodynamic research
- 3D nuclear test simulations.
Where will the first 3 Supercomputers be set up under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) mission?
The first 3 Supercomputers will be set up in
- IIT BHU – Supercomputer with a speed of 1 Peta Flop – It was inaugurated in 2019, it has been named ‘Param Shivay’.
- IIT Kharagpur – Supercomputer with a speed of 650 Teraflops.
- IIITM Pune – Supercomputer with a speed of 650 Teraflops.