Recently, the AI Supercomputer 'AIRAWAT' installed at C-DAC, Pune, has been ranked 75th globally. It was announced in the 61st edition of the Top 500 Global Supercomputing List at the International Supercomputing Conference in Germany (ISC 2023). It places India at the summit of the global AI Supercomputing nations. The system is deployed as part of India's National Programme on AI.

The MeitY intends to boost AIRAWAT's computing power to 1,000 AI Petaflops to satisfy current AI computing requirements. Deploying AIRAWAT would pave the way for indigenous artificial intelligence (AI) enabled product and solution development by India's academic institutions, research labs, research communities, industry, and startups.

Supercomputer

A supercomputer is a high-performance, high-powered computer capable of processing massive quantities of data and performing complex calculations at lightning speed. It's put to use when a lot of processing power is needed. The power of ten to the fifteenth floating-point operations per second (PETFLOPS) is the standard unit of measurement for a supercomputer's processing performance. A typical performance metric is a computer's number of floating-point operations per second. The United States, Japan, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, and the United Kingdom have fewer supercomputers than China.

Supercomputers in India

PARAM 8000 was India's first supercomputer. PARAM Shivay, PARAM Shakti, PARAM Brahma, PARAM Yukti, and PARAM Sanganak were installed at various institutions around India. The HPC-AI supercomputer PARAM Siddhi was ranked 62nd among the world's 500 most powerful supercomputer systems in 2020.

National Supercomputing Mission

The National Supercomputing Mission was established in 2015 to increase India's research capability and skills. It intends to connect several research institutes to develop a supercomputer network by utilising the National Knowledge Network (NKN). The Ministry of Science and Technology (DST) and the MeitY jointly run the National Supercomputing Mission. 

Furthermore, the Development Centre for Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in Pune and the IISc in Bengaluru oversee the National Supercomputing Mission. The mission is divided into three phases: 

• Phase I focuses on supercomputer assembly, 
• Phase II seeks to manufacture specific components in India, and 
• Phase III entails designing the supercomputer in India.

Supercomputers in the world

• Summit is now the world's most powerful supercomputer. It is at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, United States of America. IBM and NVIDIA collaborated to create the machine with a computing power of 200 petaflops.
• Sierra is the second-strongest supercomputer. It's at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. IBM and NVIDIA built the 125-petaflop computer. Nuclear weapons and climate change research use it.
• Sunway TaihuLight is the third-most powerful supercomputer. Wuxi's National Supercomputing Centre houses it. The National Research Centre of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology built the 93-petaflop machine. Climate modelling and earth system science research use it.
• Tianhe-2A is the fourth-most powerful supercomputer. It's at Guangzhou, China's National Supercomputer Centre. The National University of Defence Technology produced the 61-petaflop computer. Materials science and engineering research use it.
• Frontera is the world's fifth-fastest supercomputer. It's at Texas's Advanced Computing Centre. Dell produced the 23.5-petaflop computer. Particle physics and earth science researchers use it.
• The sixth-strongest supercomputer is Piz Daint. Swiss National Supercomputing Centre hosts it. Cray built the 21.2 petaflop machine. Materials science and computational fluid dynamics research use it.
• Trinity is the seventh-strongest supercomputer. Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico houses it. Cray built the 20.2 petaflop machine. Energy and climate modelling studies use it.
• The eighth-strongest supercomputer is AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure (ABCI). The Tokyo-based National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology houses it. Fujitsu developed the 19.9-petaflop computer. Artificial intelligence and machine learning research use it.
• The ninth-most powerful supercomputer in the world is called SuperMUC-NG. It is situated in Germany's Leibniz Supercomputing Centre. The device was created by Lenovo and had a 19.5 petaflop processing capacity. It is employed in research across several disciplines, including astrophysics and climate modelling.
• Selene is the tenth most powerful supercomputer. It's in Santa Clara, California, at NVIDIA. NVIDIA built the 17.6-petaflop computer. Artificial intelligence and machine learning research use it.

Conclusion

The government plans to build AIRAWAT, a Big Data analytics cloud platform with advanced AI processing capabilities. The infrastructure will be capable of high-performance supercomputing and the development of new applications, specifically for the healthcare and agriculture sectors, weather forecasting, and financial inclusion, to name a few.

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