India to ink mega supercomputer deal with France

RISING SUN

Senior member
Dec 3, 2017
17,872
7,646
India to ink mega supercomputer deal with France
The Modi government on Saturday inked a deal with France-based European Information Technology corporation Atos to procure supercomputers worth Rs 4,500 crore for academic and research institutions across India.

The Atos and the C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) – the research and development organization of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology – signed the contract. The signing ceremony took place in the presence of Jean Yves Le Drian, French minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs and Ajay Prakash Sawhney, secretary - Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

The Atos has its headquarters at Bezons in France.

The C-DAC contract with Atos is aimed at roping in the global leader in digital transformation into the National Supercomputing Mission, which the government launched in 2015 to set up a network of 73 high-performance computing facilities at research and academic institutions across the country at an expenditure of Rs 4500 crore over a period of seven years, indicated officials. This endeavour will add weight to the Modi government's digital endeavours.

The contract would clear the way for the Atos to deploy its Bull Sequana supercomputers in India to build a network with a cumulative computing power of more than 10 petaflops.
Flops (or Floating Point Operations Per Second) is a unit for measure of performance of computers and one petaflops is equal to a thousand trillion floating point operations per second.

The high-performance computing facilities, which the Atos will deploy in India, will include the corporation's advanced BullSequana XH2000.

Le Adrian will commence his visit to Mumbai from Friday. Apart from calling on Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, he will interact with Indian and French personalities from the film, television and tourism industries.

He and his Indian counterpart External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will meet here on Saturday. “The two sides will review the broad gamut of the multi-faceted India-France bilateral relations and exchange views on regional and global issues of mutual interest,” Raveesh Kumar, MEA spokesperson said.

French Foreign Minister will call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday before departing for Paris.
India to ink mega supercomputer deal with France
 
What indian capacity to build super computers ?

How this deal is helpful for india ?
The Bulls are twice as powerful as our most powerful Pratyush, which itself is a Cray. The fastest Param tops off at around 500 teraflops.

To give you a comparison
Param fastest - approx. 500 teraflops
Pratyush (Cray) fastest - approx. 3700 teraflops
Bull fastest - approx. 11000 teraflops
Summit IBM - approx. 143000 teraflops

As you can see, currently, the bulls are far ahead in terms of raw power. There is a plan to build an exaflop in India, but its still under development.
 
The Bulls are twice as powerful as our most powerful Pratyush, which itself is a Cray. The fastest Param tops off at around 500 teraflops.

To give you a comparison
Param fastest - approx. 500 teraflops
Pratyush (Cray) fastest - approx. 3700 teraflops
Bull fastest - approx. 11000 teraflops
Summit IBM - approx. 143000 teraflops

As you can see, currently, the bulls are far ahead in terms of raw power. There is a plan to build an exaflop in India, but its still under development.

Cray is US imported ?

I thought we were self sufficient in super computing and we didn't make higher capacity because necessity not there.

Seems we are lagging & looking for cooperation for just twice the capacity.
 
hmm , so why cant we design one? If I am correct all these use stock cpus like intel xeons but run on a custom backplane.
 
What indian capacity to build super computers ?

How this deal is helpful for india ?
ATOS is well known for quality top end solutions in diverse fields whether it is payment industry, technology industry or hardware, it is well established world over and it might come surprise to many here, but ATOS is here in India from very long time.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sathya
hmm , so why cant we design one? If I am correct all these use stock cpus like intel xeons but run on a custom backplane.
It is not as simple as it feels. There are multitude of variables involved in building a supercomputer. And to top it off, it needs massive amount of physical infrastructure. It does not mean our scientists are slow, it has more to do with vast population and providing sufficient numbers(and power) as required by different field people/organizations.
 
It is not as simple as it feels. There are multitude of variables involved in building a supercomputer. And to top it off, it needs massive amount of physical infrastructure. It does not mean our scientists are slow, it has more to do with vast population and providing sufficient numbers(and power) as required by different field people/organizations.
I know its not that simple. As is the case with most of the hi-tech it will require capex investment. These are long term investment which not only build up capacity but also the increase the pool of skilled personnel for future projects.
 
The Bulls are twice as powerful as our most powerful Pratyush, which itself is a Cray. The fastest Param tops off at around 500 teraflops.

To give you a comparison
Param fastest - approx. 500 teraflops
Pratyush (Cray) fastest - approx. 3700 teraflops
Bull fastest - approx. 11000 teraflops
Summit IBM - approx. 143000 teraflops

As you can see, currently, the bulls are far ahead in terms of raw power. There is a plan to build an exaflop in India, but its still under development.
TOP500 - Wikipedia

Summit is the 3rd most power efficient as well as being the fastest and the first to break the Exa op barrier with 1.88 Exa ops.
November 2018 | TOP500 Supercomputer Sites
Summit (supercomputer) - Wikipedia

Summit_ORNL-2060x1648.jpg