India's next supercomputer unveiled at IIT Guwahati

QUICK PILL

• The PARAM-ISHAN has a power of 250 Teraflops and 300 tera bites.
• The supercomputer will be used to process weather, climate modeling and understand seismic data in Northeast.

India's next supercomputer, PARAM-ISHAN, has been launched at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati.

PARAM-ISHAN is one of the fastest computers of its kind, said Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar, moments after launching it on 19 September.

This supercomputer is a part of PARAM series, which are designed and assembled by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). PARAM-ISHAN has a power of 250 Teraflops and 300 tera bites capacity.

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This super computational facility will be used in the application areas of Computational Chemistry, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Computational Electromagnetic, Civil Engineering Structures, Nana-block Self Assemble, Optimisation etc. For instance, North East India receives heavy rainfall during monsoons, which leads to flooding and landslides.PARAM-ISHAN can be used to process weather, climate modeling and to understand seismic data. Around Rs 10 crore has reportedly been spent to build the supercomputer.

IIT Guwahati Director Gautam Biswas said that PARAM-ISHAN will not only augment the research initiatives in the Institute, but also help in creating an ecosystem for attracting right talents to the field of research.

Union #HRD Minister @PrakashJavdekar launched PARAM-ISHAN #SuperComputer at IIT,Guwahati (1/3) pic.twitter.com/wEuYolMY4Z

— Ministry of HRD (@HRDMinistry) September 19, 2016

Glad movement to have the fastest and powerful #SuperComputer in northeastern, eastern and southern regions (2/3) pic.twitter.com/Ika2rsz2IE

— Ministry of HRD (@HRDMinistry) September 19, 2016

Speaking at the event, Javadekar said that a nation's potential for growth is evaluated on the quality of research and development.

According to a release from IIT Guwahati, the government also invited for new developmental and research initiatives.

Around 2000 proposals were received, of which four hundred were shortlisted and funds released for the various projects across the county.

We are inviting investors to India under the Make in India and Digital India programs, Javadekar said.

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