IIT-Patna will acquire PARAM by September of this year

By September of this year, the Indian Institute of Technology-Patna (IIT-P) will have a PARAM supercomputer with 833 TF (Tera Flops) HPC (high performance computing) systems. It will be Bihar’s first supercomputer.

The IIT-P and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a central government agency, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Tuesday for the establishment of a supercomputer under the Centre’s National Supercomputing Mission (NSM), which is funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST).

A similar supercomputer (833 TF) was recently installed at IIT-BHU, and it is planned to install four more (833 TF) at IIT-Guwahati, IIT-Gandhinagar, IIT-Mandi, and NIT-Trichy.

Prof. T. N. Singh, Director of IIT-Patna, and Shri E. Magesh, Director General (DG) of C-DAC, signed the MoU in the presence of Prof. Somanath Tripathy, Dr. Snehasis Das Chakrabarty, and a team of C-DAC personnel.

“According to the MOU, the supercomputer will be installed on the IIT-Patna campus in Bihta by September of this year. In accordance with one of the ambitious initiatives “Aatma Nirbhar Bharat”, its infrastructure will be based on the Rudra server, which is designed, manufactured, and assembled in India. This facility will enhance research and development (R&D) at IIT Patna and other organisations in eastern India, IIT-P spokesperson Kripa Shankar Singh told the Times of India on Tuesday.

“The goal of the national supercomputing mission (NSM) is to equip technology institutions with high-performance computing facilities that can be used for a variety of applications, such as artificial intelligence, cyber security, computational dynamics, weather modelling, disaster recovery, drug discovery, molecular dynamics, machine learning, etc.,” a C-DAC representative explained.

The general director of C-DAC, E Magesh, thanked IIT-Patna for its support and stated, “This initiative will go a long way in assisting students and researchers in developing innovative software and solutions.”
Prof. T. N. Singh, director of IIT-Patna, stated that this supercomputer would be a watershed moment and would enhance high-level data computation for a variety of applications.