Why in the News?

This newscard is an excerpt from the original article published in The Hindu.

What is a Supercomputer?

Overview: A high-performance computing system capable of trillions to quintillions of calculations per second.
Parallel Computing: Uses thousands of processors working together instead of relying on a single fast processor.
Applications: Climate modelling, nuclear simulations, black hole research, drug discovery, and artificial intelligence training.
Performance Measure: FLOPs (floating-point operations per second); advanced machines now achieve exaflop levels (10¹⁸ calculations/sec).

Speed: Laptops perform billions of FLOPs; supercomputers perform quintillions.
Parallelism: PCs use one or few processors; supercomputers employ thousands to millions of cores.
Structure: Built of interconnected nodes (processor + memory bundles) linked by ultra-fast networks.
Storage: Manage petabytes of data, unlike gigabytes/terabytes in personal devices.
Cooling & Power: Need specialised cooling (water/immersion) and consume electricity equal to a small town.
Usage: PCs run interactive apps; supercomputers run scheduled jobs remotely for scientists and researchers.

Early Efforts: Began with C-DAC’s PARAM 8000 (1991) after Western import restrictions.
National Supercomputing Mission (2015): Jointly by DST & Ministry of Electronics and IT; implemented by C-DAC and IISc to build 70+ systems.
Major Systems (2025):
- AIRAWAT-PSAI (C-DAC, Pune) – fastest in India (8.5 PF, global rank 136).
- PARAM Siddhi-AI – global AI leader.
- Pratyush (IITM, Pune) – weather & climate (3.76 PF).
- Mihir (NCMRWF, Noida) – medium-range weather (2.57 PF).
- PARAM Pravega (IISc, Bengaluru) – academic use (>3.3 PF).
Indigenous Push: PARAM Rudra (2024) with Indian servers and software stack.
Applications: Monsoon forecasting, Himalayan research, defence simulations, AI, drug design, materials science.
Current Capacity: 34+ supercomputers with ~35 petaflops; plans for exascale systems underway.

[UPSC 2014] Param Padma, which was in the news recently, is:

(a) a new Civilian Award instituted by the Government of India

(b) the name of a supercomputer developed by India *

(d) a software programme to facilitate e-governance in Madhya Pradesh