AIRAWAT

About Supercomputer ‘AIRAWAT’:

• The supercomputer has been named in the 61st edition of the Top 500 Global Supercomputing List released recently.
• The AI supercomputer AIRAWAT’ is installed at C-DAC, Pune. The system is installed under National Program on AI by the Government of India.
• AIRAWAT’s manufacturer is Netweb Technologies.
• Airawat PSAI, stands as India’s largest and fastest AI supercomputing system, with a remarkable speed of 13,170 teraflops.
• Benefits:
  • It will empower the Academia, Research Labs, Scientific Community, Industry and Start-Ups to develop indigenous AI-enabled products/solutions especially for solving India-specific grand challenges and complex real-life problems.
  • It has the potential to revolutionize various sectors, including weather forecasting, drug discovery, climate modelling, and artificial intelligence research. 

About Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC):

• It is a prominent R&D organization under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
• It focuses on research and development in various domains, including information technology, electronics, and supercomputing.
• It was established in the year 1988.
• It was set up to build Supercomputers in context of denial of import of Supercomputers by USA.
• C-DAC build India’s first indigenously built supercomputer Param 8000 in 1991.

Q1) What is PARAM 8000 supercomputer?

PARAM 8000 was a distributed memory MIMD architecture with a reconfigurable interconnection network. The PARAM 8000 was noted to be 28 times more powerful than the Cray X-MP that the government originally requested, for the same $10 million cost quoted for it.

Source: India’s Airawat PSAI: Country’s Fastest Supercomputer ranks 75th among Global Top 500