Supercomputing in India

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Supercomputing in India has a history going back to the 1980s.[1] The Government of India created an indigenous development programme as they had difficulty purchasing foreign supercomputers.[1] As of June 2023, the AIRAWAT supercomputer is the fastest supercomputer in India, having been ranked 75th fastest in the world in the TOP500 supercomputer list.[2] AIRAWAT has been installed at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in Pune.[3]

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

Flosolver in 1986.[4][11] BARC created the Anupam series of supercomputers. ANURAG created the PACE series of supercomputers.[10]

C-DAC First Mission

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

National Supercomputing Mission
Supercomputing overview
Formed2015
Parent departmentC-DAC
Websitehttps://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]

Rankings

Current TOP500

As of November 2023 there are 4 systems based in India on the TOP500 supercomputer list.[23]

Rank Site Name Rmax
(TFlop/s)
Rpeak
(PFlop/s)
75 Centre for Development of Advanced Computing AIRAWAT - PSAI[24][25] 8.5 13.17
163 Centre for Development of Advanced Computing PARAM Siddhi-AI 4.62.0 5.27
201 Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology Pratyush (Cray XC40)[26][27] 3.76 4.01
354 National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting Mihir (Cray XC40) 2.57 2.81

India's historical rank in TOP500

Rank of Indian supercomputers in TOP500 list[28]
List Number of systems
in TOP500
System Share (%) Total Rmax
(Gflops)
Total Rpeak
(Gflops)
Cores
2020 June 2 0.4 6,334,340 6,814,886 202,824
2019 November 2 0.4 6,334,340 6,814,886 202,824
2019 June 3 0.6 7,457,490 8,228,006 241,224
2018 November 4 0.8 8,358,996 9,472,166 272,328
2018 June 5 1 9,078,216 10,262,899 310,344
2017 November 4 0.8 2,794,753 3,759,153 107,544
2017 June 4 0.8 2,703,926 3,935,693 103,116
2016 November 5 1 3,092,368 4,456,051 133,172
2016 June 9 1.8 4,406,352 5,901,043 204,052
2015 November 11 2.2 4,933,698 6,662,387 236,692
2015 June 11 2.2 4,597,998 5,887,007 226,652
2014 November 9 1.8 3,137,692 3,912,187 184,124
2014 June 9 1.8 2,898,745 3,521,915 169,324
2013 November 12 2.4 3,040,297 3,812,719 188,252
2013 June 11 2.2 2,690,461 3,517,536 173,580
2012 November 9 1.8 1,291,739 1,890,914 90,548
2012 June 5 1 787,652 1,242,746 56,460
2011 November 2 0.4 187,910 242,995 18,128
2011 June 2 0.4 187,910 242,995 18,128
2010 November 4 0.8 257,243 333,005 25,808
2010 June 5 1 283,380 384,593 30,104
2009 November 3 0.6 199,257 279,702 23,416
2009 June 6 1.2 247,285 333,519 33,456
2008 November 8 1.6 259,394 368,501 37,488
2008 June 6 1.2 189,854 275,617 32,432
2007 November 9 1.8 194,524 303,651 34,932
2007 June 8 1.6 45,697 86,642 10,336
2006 November 10 2 34,162 61,520 10,908
2006 June 11 2.2 36,839 66,776 11,638
2005 November 4 0.8 11,379 21,691 3,354
2005 June 8 1.6 13,995 24,726 4,212
2004 November 7 1.4 6,945 11,873 2,126
2004 June 6 1.2 5,652 9,557 1,750
2003 November 3 0.6 2,099 5,098 1,106
2003 June 2 0.4 1,158 3,747 822

See also

Computers

General

References

  1. ^
    S2CID 47348115
    . Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  2. ^ "AIRAWAT - PSAI - NVIDIA DGX A100, AMD EPYC 7742 64C 2.25GHz, NVIDIA A100, Infiniband HDR | TOP500". www.top500.org. TOP500. Retrieved 12 July 2023.
  3. ^ Qureshi, Tahir (24 May 2023). "AI Supercomputer AIRAWAT Puts India Among Top Supercomputing League". www.india.com. Retrieved 12 July 2023.
  4. ^
    S2CID 119381130
    . Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  5. ^ . Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  6. ^ . Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  7. ^ Beary, Habib (1 April 2003). "India unveils huge supercomputer". BBC News. India began developing supercomputers in the late 1980s after being refused one by the US.
  8. ^ . Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  9. ^ . Retrieved 20 July 2020. L.M. Patnaik developed a significant amount of the factual material for this report.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h i Patnaik, LM. "High Performance Computing in India and Far-East". United Nations Industrial Development Organisation. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  11. . Retrieved 14 September 2021.
  12. . Retrieved 23 July 2020.
  13. ^ "India Aims to Double R&D Spending for Science". HPC Wire. 4 January 2012. Retrieved 29 January 2012.
  14. ^ C-DAC and Supercomputers in India Archived 2013-08-16 at the Wayback Machine
  15. ^ "India plans 61 times faster supercomputer by 2017". The Times of India. 27 September 2012. Archived from the original on 28 January 2013. Retrieved 9 October 2012.
  16. ^ Prashanth, GN (3 August 2015). "IISC all set to launch supercomputing mission". Deccan Herald. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  17. ^ a b "Govt to launch Rs 4,500 cr National Supercomputing Mission". cdac.in. Centre for Development of Advanced Computing. 25 March 2015. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  18. ^ "National Supercomputing Mission". pib.gov.in. Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Ministry of Science & Technology. 29 April 2015. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  19. ^ a b c d e Basu, Mohana (22 December 2019). "India to build 11 new supercomputers, with indigenous processors developed by C-DAC". ThePrint. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  20. ^ a b c d e f Gill, Prabhjote (23 October 2020). "Made in India supercomputers likely by the end of the year, says National Supercomputing Mission". Business Insider. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  21. ^ "India Greenlights $730 Million Supercomputing Grid". HPC Wire. 26 March 2015.
  22. ^ "Govt to install 73 supercomputers across the country". Zee News. 25 March 2015.
  23. ^ "TOP500 List - Nov 2023". TOP500. Retrieved 4 January 2024.
  24. ^ "AIRAWAT - PSAI". Retrieved 4 January 2024.
  25. ^ "India's AI supercomputer AIRAWAT makes it to the list of world's 100 most powerful". Retrieved 4 January 2024.
  26. ^ "India's fastest supercomputer 'Pratyush' established at Pune's IITM". The Indian Express. 9 January 2018. Archived from the original on 26 January 2018. Retrieved 26 January 2018.
  27. ^ "India unveils Pratyush, its fastest supercomputer yet". The Hindu. 8 January 2018. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
  28. ^ "TOP500 List, Country - India". Retrieved 23 June 2020.