Supercomputer Param Pravega

Context

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) has installed and commissioned Param Pravega.

Key-points

• It is one of the most powerful supercomputers in India, and the largest in an Indian academic institution, under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM).
• According to IISc, Param Pravega has a total supercomputing capacity of 3.3 petaflops (1 petaflop equals a quadrillion or 1,015 operations per second).
• The system is expected to power diverse research and educational pursuits. It has a supercomputing capacity of 3.3 petaflops (1015 operations per second).
• It has been designed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). 
• A majority of the components used to build this system have been manufactured and assembled within India.

What is a Supercomputer?

• A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer.
• The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS).
• Since 2017, there are supercomputers which can perform over a hundred quadrillion FLOPS (petaFLOPS).
• They are expensive and are employed for specialised applications that require immense amounts of mathematical calculations (number crunching).
• For example, weather forecasting requires a supercomputer.
• Other uses of supercomputers include scientific simulations, (animated) graphics, fluid dynamic calculations, nuclear energy research, electronic design, and analysis of geological data (e.g. in petrochemical prospecting).
• Since November 2017, all of the world’s fastest 500 supercomputers run Linux-based operating systems.

What is the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM)?

• NSM is a proposed plan by GoI to create a cluster of seventy supercomputers connecting various academic and research institutions across India.
• NSM envisaged setting up a network of 70 high-performance computing facilities with an aim to connect national academic and R&D institutions across India over a seven-year period at an estimated cost of Rs 4500 Crores.
• It was launched in 2015 to enhance the research capacities and capabilities in the country by connecting them to form a Supercomputing grid, with National Knowledge Network (NKN) as the backbone.
• The mission comes under the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) and Department of Science and Technology (DST).
• Nodal Agencies of National Supercomputing Mission is Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.
• Under NSM, the long-term plan is to build a strong base of 20,000 skilled persons over the next five years who will be equipped to handle the complexities of supercomputers.
• In 2020, a RTI reply revealed that India has produced just three supercomputers since 2015 under NSM
• PARAM Shivay installed in IIT-BHU, Varanasi with 837 TeraFlop capacity.
• Second one at IIT-Kharagpur with 1.66 PetaFlop capacity.
• PARAM Brahma at ISER-Pune, has a capacity of 797 TeraFlop.
• Currently, there are four supercomputers from India in the Top 500 list of supercomputers in the world.