Supercomputing in India

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 2020, when ranking by number of supercomputer systems in the TOP500 list, India is ranked 23rd in the world.[2] As of June 2020 the Cray XC40-based Pratyush is the fastest supercomputer in India.[3][4]

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.[5][6] The Flosolver MK1, described as a parallel processing system, started operations in December 1986.[5][7][6]

Indigenous development programme

In 1987 the Indian Government had requested to purchase a Cray X-MP supercomputer; this request was denied by the United States government as the machine could have a dual use in weapons development.[8] After this problem, in the same year, the Government of India decided to promote an indigenous supercomputer development programme.[9][10][11] Multiple projects were commissioned from different groups including the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), the Centre 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).[10][11] C-DOT created "CHIPPS": the C-DOT High-Performance Parallel Processing System. NAL had created the Flosolver in 1986.[5] BARC created the Anupam series of supercomputers. ANURAG created the PACE series of supercomputers.[11]

C-DAC First Mission

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) was created at some point between November 1987 and August 1988.[9][11][10] C-DAC was given an initial 3 year budget of Rs375 million to create a 1000MFLOPS (1GFLOPS) supercomputer by 1991.[11] C-DAC unveiled the PARAM 8000 supercomputer in 1991.[1] This was followed by the PARAM 8600 in 1992/1993.[11][10] These machines demonstrated to the world Indian technological prowess and led to export success.[11][10]

C-DAC Second Mission

The PARAM 8000 was considered a success for C-DAC in delivering a gigaFLOPS range parallel computer.[11] 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.[11][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.[7] NAL's Flosolver had 4 subsequent machines built in its series.[7] At the same time ANURAG continued to develop PACE, primarily based on SPARC processors.[7]

12th Five Year Plan

The Indian Government has proposed to commit 2.5 billion USD 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

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). 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 June 2020 there are 2 systems based in India on the TOP500 supercomputer list.[23]

Rank	Site	Name	Rmax (TFlop/s)	Rpeak (TFlop/s)
67	Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology	Pratyush (Cray XC40)	3,763.9	4,006.2
120	National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting	Mihir (Cray XC40)	2,570.4	2,808.7

India's historical rank in TOP500

Rank of Indian supercomputers in TOP500 list[24]

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

• EKA (supercomputer)
• PARAM
• Wipro Supernova

General

• History of supercomputing
• Supercomputing in China
• Supercomputing in Europe
• Supercomputing in Japan
• TOP500

References

1. Sinha, P. K.; Dixit, S. P.; Mohanram, N.; Purohit, S. C.; Arora, R. K.; Ramakrishnan, S. (2004). "Current state and future trends in high performance computing and communications (HPCC) research in India". Proceedings. 10th IEEE International Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems, 2004: 217–220. doi:10.1109/FTDCS.2004.1316619. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
2. "TOP500, List statistics-Countries". Retrieved 23 June 2020.
3. "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.
4. "India unveils Pratyush, its fastest supercomputer yet". The Hindu. 8 January 2018. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
5. Sinha, U. N. (November 1998). ` "On parallel computing — Indian trends" Check |url= value (help). Resonance. 3 (11): 2–5. doi:10.1007/BF02838704. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
6. Sinha, UN (1997). "A Decade of Parallel Meteorological Computing on the Flosolver". In Hoffmann, Geerd-R (ed.). Making its mark : proceedings of the Seventh ECMWF Workshop on the Use of Parallel Processors in Meteorology, Reading, UK, November 2-6, 1996. World Scientific. pp. 449–460. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
7. Prasad, Ss; Nayak, Kd (March 2003). "R & D in High Performance Computing Systems in India". IETE Technical Review. 20 (2): 151–155. doi:10.1080/02564602.2003.11417079. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
8. 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.
9. Delapierre, Michel; Zimmermann, Jean-Benoît (1989). "La nouvelle politique industrielle : le cas de l'informatique". Tiers-Monde. 30 (119): 559–576. doi:10.3406/tiers.1989.3862. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
10. Kahaner, D.K. (1996). "Parallel computing in India". IEEE Parallel & Distributed Technology: Systems & Applications. 4 (3): 7–11. doi:10.1109/88.532134. Retrieved 20 July 2020. L.M. Patnaik developed a significant amount of the factual material for this report.
11. Patnaik, LM. "High Performance Computing in India and Far-East". United Nations Industrial Development Organisation. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
12. Bhatkar, V.P. (April 1994). "PARAM parallel supercomputer: architecture, programming environment, and applications". Proceedings of 8th International Parallel Processing Symposium: 388–389. doi:10.1109/IPPS.1994.288273. 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
15. "India plans 61 times faster supercomputer by 2017". Times of India. 27 September 2012. Retrieved 9 October 2012.
16. Prashanth, GN (3 August 2015). "IISC all set to launch supercomputing mission". Deccan Herald. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
17. "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. Basu, Mohana (22 December 2019). "India to build 11 new supercomputers, with indigenous processors developed by C-DAC". ThePrint. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
20. 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 - June 2020". TOP500. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
24. "TOP500 List, Country - India". Retrieved 23 June 2020.