Formation | late 1980's |
---|---|
Type | Supercomputers |
Parent organization | Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) |
PARAM is a series of Indian supercomputers designed and assembled by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in Pune.[1][2] PARAM means "supreme" in the Sanskrit language, whilst also creating an acronym for "PARAllel Machine".[1] As of November 2022 the fastest machine in the series is the PARAM Siddhi AI which ranks 163rd in world, with an Rpeak of 5.267 petaflops.[3]
Further information: Supercomputing in India |
C-DAC was created in November 1987, originally as the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing Technology (C-DACT).[4] This was in response to issues purchasing supercomputers from foreign sources.[5] The Indian Government decided to try and develop indigenous computing technology.[6]
The PARAM 8000 was the first machine in the series and was built from scratch.[2] A prototype was benchmarked at the "1990 Zurich Super-computing Show":[note 1] of the machines that ran at the show it came second only to one from the United States.[7]
A 64-node machine was delivered in August 1991.[2][1] Each node used Inmos T800/T805 transputers.[1] A 256-node machine had a theoretical performance of 1GFLOPS, however in practice had a sustained performance of 100-200MFLOPS.[1][2] PARAM 8000 was a distributed memory MIMD architecture with a reconfigurable interconnection network.[8]
The PARAM 8000 was noted to be 28 times more powerful than the Cray X-MP that the government originally requested, for the same $10 million cost quoted for it.[9]
The computer was a success and was exported to Germany, United Kingdom and Russia.[10] Apart from taking over the home market, PARAM attracted 14 other buyers with its relatively low price tag of $350,000.[11]
The computer was also exported to the ICAD Moscow in 1991 under Russian collaboration.[12][13][14][15]
PARAM 8600 was an improvement over PARAM 8000. In 1992 C-DAC realised its machines were underpowered and wished to integrate the newly released Intel i860 processor.[16] Each node was created with one i860 and four Inmos T800 transputers.[8][2][1] The same PARAS programming environment was used for both the PARAM 8000 and 8600; this meant that programs were portable.[2][1] Each 8600 cluster was noted to be as powerful as 4 PARAM 8000 clusters.[1]
The PARAM (param vashisht lega) 9000 was designed to be merge cluster processing and massively parallel processing computing workloads.[17] It was first demonstrated in 1994.[5] The design was changed to be modular so that newer processors could be easily accommodated.[8] Typically a system used 32–40 processors, however it could be scaled up to 200 CPUs using the clos network topology.[8] The PARAM 9000/SS was the SuperSPARC II processor variant,[18] the PARAM 9000/US used the UltraSPARC processor,[9] and the PARAM 9000/AA used the DEC Alpha.[19]
The PARAM 10000 was unveiled in 1998 as part of C-DAC's second mission.[5] PARAM 10000 used several independent nodes, each based on the Sun Enterprise 250 server; each such server contained two 400Mhz UltraSPARC II processors. The base configuration had three compute nodes and a server node. The peak speed of this base system was 6.4 GFLOPS.[20] A typical system would contain 160 CPUs and be capable of 100 GFLOPS[21] But, it was easily scalable to the TFLOP range. Exported to Russia and Singapore.[22]
Further computers were made in the PARAM series as one-off supercomputers, rather than serial production machines. From the late 2010s many machines were created as part of the National Supercomputing Mission.
Name | Release Year | Notes | Rmax | Rpeak | Location |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
PARAM 8000 | 1991 | Inmos T800 Transputers, Distributed Memory MIMD, 64 processors | Multiple | ||
PARAM 8600 | 1992 | Intel i860, 256 processors | 5 GFLOPS | Multiple | |
PARAM 9900 | 1994 | clos network. SuperSPARC II, UltraSPARC and DEC Alpha variants, 32 to 200 processors | Multiple | ||
PARAM 10000 | 1998 | Sun Enterprise 250, 400Mhz UltraSPARC UltraSPARC II processor, 160 processors | 6.4 GFLOPS | ||
PARAM Padma | 2002[5] | 1TB storage, 248 IBM Power4 – 1 GHz,[5] IBM AIX 5.1L, PARAMNet. PARAM Padma was the first Indian machine ranked on a worldwide supercomputer list.[5] | 1024 GFLOPS | ||
PARAM Yuva | 2008 | 4608 cores, Intel 73XX – 2.9 GHz, 25 to 200 TB,[23] PARAMnet 3. | 38.1 TFLOPS[24] | 54 TFLOPS[24] | |
PARAM Yuva II | 2013 | Created in three months at a cost of ₹160 million (US$2 million) - first Indian supercomputer to achieve more than 500 teraflops.[25][26][27] | 360.8 TFLOPS[28][29] | 524 TFLOPS | |
PARAM Kanchenjunga[30] | 2016 | 15 TFLOPS | National Institute of Technology Sikkim | ||
PARAM Bio-Embryo[31] | 100 TFLOPS | C-DAC Pune | |||
PARAM Bio-Inferno[31] | 147.5 TFLOPS | C-DAC Pune | |||
PARAM Shrestha[31] | 100 TFLOPS | C-DAC Pune | |||
PARAM Rudra[31] | based on Intel Xeon 2nd Generation Cascade Lake dual socket Processors | 138 TFLOPS | C-DAC Pune | ||
PARAM Neel[32] | India's first HPC system that uses the Fujitsu A64fx- NSP1 CPU, an ARM processor with 48 cores and a speed of 1.8 GHz | 100 TFLOPS | C-DAC Pune | ||
PARAM Shivay[33][34] | 2019 | 192 CPU compute nodes, 20 High memory nodes, 11 GPU compute nodes, Cost Rs 32.5 crore | 0.43 PFLOPS | 0.84 PFLOPS | Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi |
PARAM Brahma[35][36] | 2019 | 1PB storage | 0.85 PFLOPS | 1.7 PFLOPS | IISER Pune |
PARAM Siddhi-AI[37] | 2020 | Nvidia DGX SuperPOD based networking architecture, HPC-AI engine software frame works and cloud platform from C-DAC | 4.6 PFLOPS | 5.267 PFLOPS | C-DAC Pune |
PARAM Sanganak[38] | 2020 | 1.67 PFLOPS | IIT Kanpur | ||
PARAM Yukti[32] | 1.8 PFLOPS | JNCASR, Bengaluru | |||
PARAM Utkarsh[39] | 2021 | Based on Intel Cascade Lake processor and NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU with 100 Gbps infiniband non-blocking interconnect | 838 TFLOPS | C-DAC Bengaluru | |
PARAM Smriti[40] | 2021 | 838 TFLOPS | NAIB Mohali | ||
PARAM Seva[31] | 2021 | based on heterogeneous and hybrid configuration of Intel Xeon Cascade lake processors, and NVIDIA Tesla V100. | 838 TFLOPS | IIT Hydrabad | |
PARAM Spoorthi[32] | 2021 | 100 TFLOPS | SETS, Chennai | ||
PARAM Pravega[41][42] | 2022 | It runs on CentOS 7.x, has 4 petabytes of storage, 3.3 PFLOPS | 3.3 PFLOPS | Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru | |
PARAM Ganga[43] | 2022 | 1.67 PFLOPS | IIT Roorkee | ||
PARAM Shakti[44] | 2022 | 850 TFLOPS | 1.66 PFLOPS | IIT Kharagpur | |
PARAM Ananta[45] | 2022 | 838 TFLOPS | IIT Gandhinagar | ||
PARAM Himalaya[32] | 2022 | 838 TFLOPS | IIT, Mandi | ||
PARAM KAMRUPA [46] | 2022 | 107 CPU nodes, 10 GPU nodes, 9 high memory nodes, 740 CPU cores, 102400 CUDA cores. It runs on low and high microwave power with active and passive high energy source.[47][48][49][50] | 838 TFLOPS | 1.5 PFLOPS | Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati[51] |
PARAM Porul[52] | 2022 | 107 CPU nodes, 10 GPU nodes, 39 high memory nodes, 102400 CUDA cores.[53] | 838 TFLOPS | National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli |
PARAMNet is a high speed high bandwidth low latency network developed for the PARAM series. The original PARAMNet used an 8 port cascadable non-blocking switch developed by C-DAC. Each port provided 400 Mb/s in both directions (thus 2x400 Mbit/s) as it was a full-duplex network. It was first used in PARAM 10000.[9]
PARAMNet II, introduced with PARAM Padma, is capable of 2.5 Gbit/s while working full-duplex. It supports interfaces like Virtual Interface Architecture and Active messages. It uses 8 or 16 port SAN switches.[54]
PARAMNet-3, used in PARAM Yuva and PARAM Yuva-II, is next generation high performance networking component for building supercomputing systems. PARAMNet-3 consists of tightly integrated hardware and software components. The hardware components consist of Network Interface Cards (NIC) based on CDAC's fourth generation communication co-processor "GEMINI", and modular 48-port Packet Routing Switch "ANVAY". The software component "KSHIPRA" is a lightweight protocol stack designed to exploit capabilities of hardware and to provide industry standard interfaces to the applications. Other application areas identified for deployment of PARAMNet-3 are storage and database applications.[55]
PARAM supercomputers are used by both public and private[23] operators for various purposes. As of 2008, 52 PARAMs have been deployed. Of these, 8 are located in Russia, Singapore, Germany and Canada. PARAMs have also been sold to Tanzania, Armenia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Ghana, Myanmar, Nepal, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.[56]