India gears up for ‘exa-scale’ supercomputing

Work on “exa-scale” supercomputing capability in India is well under way, under a Rs5,000-crore project, under the 12th 5-year plan, according to eminent scientist Vijay Bhatkar.

Talking to DNA from Bhubaneswar (Orissa) on Tuesday, Bhatkar admitted that despite being a superpower in information technology, India had been lagging in this field. The US, Japan, some European nations and even China had developed such computers to help them in advancing technology.

“Exa-scale computers can perform several million-trillion mathematical operations per second, which would be 1,000 times faster than current peta-scale supercomputers in India,” Bhatkar explained.

Such high-power computing prowess is required for acurate prediction of the monsoon, natural disaster mitigation, for new discovery of drugs and many other such technologically competitive fields, he added.

“But now we are all ready to create exa-scale computers, which will help us to take huge leaps in technology and other fields,” the scientist said.

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Indian Institute of Science and several national laboratories, universities and industries are collaborating to deliver exa-scale supercomputing infrastructure, he added.