BJP government gave nod for 80 supercomputers in the next 7 years.
By Dileep Thekkethil
After the successful test firing of an indigenously made space shuttle, India is all set to hit another milestone as scientists are currently working on a new supercomputer, which will be operational by 2017.
The Government of India has set aside Rs, 4,500 crores for the ambitious supercomputer program, which is being developed with the intention to help India penetrate into an elite league of nations to have achieved such a feat.
The mission to build the supercomputer has been taken up by the Center for Development of Advanced Computing, according to Ashuthosh Sharma, the Secretary in the Ministry of Science and Technology.
The first supercomputer of India, Param, was also the handy work of the Center for Development of Advanced Computing. The government back then was forced to make an indigenous supercomputer after Cray supercomputers denied the technology as a result of a technology embargo.
The BJP government last year approved National Supercomputing Mission, which proposes to build 80 supercomputers in the next seven years.
“Some of them will be imported and the rest will be built be indigenous. The first one will come up by August 2017,” said Sharma. “We are working on how to control heat. The cost of power to run these supercomputers alone will be around Rs 1,000 crore,” he added.
After being tested, the supercomputers will be kept at different institutes in India for various purposes.
“A supercomputer can be used for various purposes like climate modeling, weather forecast, discoveries of drugs among others,” Sharma said.
A lion’s share of supercomputers in the world are owned by the US, Japan, China and the European Union.