India's first multi-petaflops supercomputer to be launched at Pune

India's first multi-petaflops supercomputer would be inaugurated at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune.

Union Minister of Earth Sciences, Dr Harsh Vardhan, will dedicate it to the nation on January 8.

The acquisition of the supercomputer is part of the Ministry of Earth Sciences' (MoES) endeavour to provide world class services (relating to weather, climate, ocean, seismological forecast) to the people of India, according to a press statement issued here.

In order to provide useful services, MoES runs several computationally intensive applications on High Performance Computers (HPC). In the last 10 years, the HPC infrastructure at MoES institutes has grown from 40 Tera flops in 2008 to 1 Peta flop in 2013-14.

At present, MoES' HPC system stands at 368th position in Top500 list. With around 1.0 PF peak capacity, India's HPC ranking is much below the rankings of major countries that generate weather/climate forecasts. 

To



provide better services and improve its position, MoES has recently augmented its computational capacity up to 6.8 PF installed at two MoES Institutes: 4.0 Peta Flops HPC facility at IITM, Pune and 2.8 Peta Flops at NCMRWF, Noida.

With this augmentation, MoES HPC facility will be No 1 in terms of peak capacity and performance.

In top 30 league

With the addition of the Pune HPC facility, India is expected to rise from the 368th position to around top 30 in the Top500 list of HPC facilities in the world. In terms of dedicated HPC resources for weather/climate community, India will be placed at the 4th position after Japan, UK and USA.

The HPC facility being inaugurated at IITM will be used for carrying out research on improving weather and climate forecasts and its applications. This MoES HPC facility will also be utilised by other MoES institutes (like INCOIS, IMD, NIOT, NCAOR, NCESS) for research activities to improve their respective weather and climate services.