India will have its indigenously-built supercomputer next year in the month of August, as confirmed by the officials of Minister of Science and Technology. The building of supercomputer is a part of the government’s Rs. 4,500 crore programme, approved in March last year.
The project is supervised by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing that built India’s first supercomputer ‘Param’. It is aimed at taking India to the elite league of nations who have made similar advancements in the field of technology.
The supercomputing mission started by the Government of India is aimed at building 80 supercomputers in the next seven years. Some of the supercomputers will be imported, and the rest will be built indigenously.
“The first supercomputer will come up by August 2017”, stated Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, Ministry of Science and Technology. “We are working on how to control heat”, he added. The secretary also explained that the cost of power to run this supercomputer alone will be Rs. 1,000 crore and will be kept in different institutes across the country. These supercomputers offer various features like weather forecast, climate modelling, discoveries of drugs and many others, Ashutosh added.
Currently, countries like US, China, Japan and the European Union hold a significant share of the top supercomputing machines in the world.
With the indigenously-built supercomputer, Prime Minister’s vision of “Make in India” is taking shape as different sectors of science and technology are coming forward to contribute to this mission, and projecting India as their new incubation hub.
The new Supercomputer is an endeavor by the Indian Government as a part of five years long project, aimed to proliferate the momentum of research and application.
