Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the state Minister for Electronics and IT launched the first indigenous server, Rudra developed by the Center for the Development of Advanced Computing( C-DAC) under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM).
The server design can be used for manufacturing Classical Standalone Commercial Servers and also as building blocks for building large Supercomputing Systems of tens of Petaflops of Computing Performance, according to an official statement.
This breakthrough will help India to design, build and deliver as per the nation’s multi-disciplinary computing needs and has critical strategic and national importance.
Sectors poised to benefit from this launched server are High-performance Computing Systems, Hyper-scale Data Centers, Edge Computing, Banking, Oil and Gas Industry, and Health Care.
When it comes to Supercomputers, India is a latecomer even though the program to develop one – started in the late 1980s after the U.S refused the purchase of a Cray X-MP supercomputer by India in fear that the Cray X-MP has dual-use in weapons development.
After the U.S denied India the purchase of the Cray X-MP supercomputer, India commissioned multiple projects from different groups including the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), the Center 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).
The C-DOT created “CHIPPS”, the C-DOT high-performance Parallel Processing System, NAL had started to develop the Flosolver in 1986. BARC created the Anupam series of Supercomputers and ANURAG created the PACE series of supercomputers.
According to the fresh top 500 list of supercomputers across the globe, by top 500.org, there were only three supercomputers in India as of 2021, they include PARAM Shiddhi-AI, Pratyush, and Mihir with only PARAM Shiddhi-AI ranked in the top 100 lists with the rest two in top 200 list.
Supercomputers are used in research and play a very important role in the field of computational science and are used for a wide range of computationally intensive tasks in various fields including quantum mechanics, weather forecasting, climate research, oil and gas exploration, molecular modeling, and more other important tasks in the military.
On the list of top 500 supercomputers in the world, China leads with 188 supercomputers which is a third more than the nearest competitor the U.S with only 122 supercomputers followed by Japan with 34 supercomputers, Germany with 26 supercomputers and France with 19 supercomputers closing the list of top 5 countries with most numbers of supercomputers.
The future will depend more on those supercomputers for research and solving of most complex problems facing humanity.
