History
Early years
India had faced difficulties in the 1980s when trying to purchase supercomputers for academic and weather forecasting purposes.[1] In 1986 the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) started the Flosolver project to develop a computer for computational fluid dynamics and aerospace engineering.[4][5] The Flosolver MK1, described as a parallel processing system, started operations in December 1986.[4][6][5]
Indigenous development programme
In 1987 the Indian Government had requested to purchase a Cray X-MP supercomputer; this request was denied by the United States government as the machine could have a dual use in weapons development.[7] After this problem, in the same year, the Government of India decided to promote an indigenous supercomputer development programme.[8][9][10] Multiple projects were commissioned from different groups including the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), and the Advanced Numerical Research and Analysis Group (ANURAG).[9][10] C-DOT created "CHIPPS": the C-DOT High-Performance Parallel Processing System. NAL had started to develop the Flosolver in 1986.[4][11] BARC created the Anupam series of supercomputers. ANURAG created the PACE series of supercomputers.[10]
C-DAC First Mission
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Further information: PARAM |
The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) was created at some point between November 1987 and August 1988.[8][10][9] C-DAC was given an initial 3 year budget of Rs375 million to create a 1000MFLOPS (1GFLOPS) supercomputer by 1991.[10] C-DAC unveiled the PARAM 8000 supercomputer in 1991.[1] This was followed by the PARAM 8600 in 1992/1993.[10][9] These machines demonstrated Indian technological prowess to the world and led to export success.[10][9] Param 8000 was replicated and installed at ICAD Moscow in 1991 with Russian collaboration.
C-DAC Second Mission
The PARAM 8000 was considered a success for C-DAC in delivering a gigaFLOPS range parallel computer.[10] From 1992 C-DAC undertook its "Second Mission" to deliver a 100 GFLOPS range computer by 1997/1998.[1] The plan was to allow the computer to scale to 1 teraFLOPS.[10][12] In 1993 the PARAM 9000 series of supercomputers was released, which had a peak computing power of 5 GFLOPS.[1] In 1998 the PARAM 10000 was released; this had a sustained performance of 38 GFLOPS on the LINPACK benchmark.[1]
C-DAC Third Mission
The C-DAC's third mission was to develop a teraFLOPS range computer.[1] The PARAM Padma was delivered in December 2002.[1] This was the first Indian supercomputer to feature on a list of the world's fastest supercomputers, in June 2003.[1]
Development by other groups in the early 2000s
By the early 2000s it was noted that only ANURAG, BARC, C-DAC and NAL were continuing development of their supercomputers.[6] NAL's Flosolver had 4 subsequent machines built in its series.[6] At the same time ANURAG continued to develop PACE, primarily based on SPARC processors.[6]
12th Five Year Plan
The Indian Government has proposed to commit US$2.5 billion to supercomputing research during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2012–2017). The project will be handled by Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore.[13] Additionally, it was later revealed that India plans to develop a supercomputer with processing power in the exaflops range.[14] It will be developed by C-DAC within the subsequent five years of approval.[15]
National Supercomputing Mission
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| Supercomputing overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 2015 |
| Parent department | C-DAC |
| Website | https://nsmindia.in/ |
In 2015 the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology announced a "National Supercomputing Mission" (NSM) to install 73 indigenous supercomputers throughout the country by 2022.[16][17][18][19] This is a seven-year program worth $730 million (Rs. 4,500 crore).[citation needed] Whilst previously computer were assembled in India, the NSM aims to produce the components within the country.[20] The NSM is being implemented by C-DAC and the Indian Institute of Science.[19]
The aim is to create a cluster of geographically distributed high-performance computing centers linked over a high-speed network, connecting various academic and research institutions across India.[17] This has been dubbed the "National Knowledge Network" (NKN).[20] The mission involves both capacity and capability machines and includes standing up three petascale supercomputers.[21][22]
The first phase involved deployment of supercomputers which have 60% Indian components.[19] The second phase machines are intended to have an Indian designed processor,[19] with a completion date of April 2021.[20] The third and final phase intends to deploy fully indigenous supercomputers,[19] with an aimed speed of 45 petaFLOPS within the NKN.[20]
By October 2020, the first assembled in India supercomputer had been installed.[20] The NSM hopes to have the manufacturing capability for indigenous production by December 2020.[20]
