India's Fastest Supercomputer Param Yuva II Unveiled

Bangalore: India’s fastest supercomputer, the second generation Param Yuva II was inaugurated by J Satyanarayana, secretary, department of electronics and information technology, at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) facility in Pune. The supercomputer is capable of crunching data up to 524 teraflops, about 10 times faster than the Param Yuva-I.

Today it takes 18 to 20 years, from testing to designing, for researchers to discover a new drug. Param Yuva II will help reduce this time frame by 2-3years. The supercomputer will make weather predictions quicker and if researchers can predict weather condition of a 6 Km radius from the satellite data that they receive then with this new supercomputer at their disposal, they can cover a 10 Km radius and that’s not all. The versatile number crunching super machine will also reduce the power consumption by 35%.

Satyanarayana said, "The facility is a stepping stone for the petaflop version of the supercomputer that India has envisioned. What we need to do now is speak to users, researchers and scientists and take feedback from them on the issues relating to usage of the facility and help them in accelerating their research work for the benefit of common man."

C-DAC director general Rajat Moona said "The list of top 500 supercomputers in the world is released twice in a year, in June and November. Had we launched Param Yuva II in November, it would have been in the 62nd position."

C-DAC’s next target is the petaflop capacity supercomputer which should be ready by December. Satyanarayana said “Once we are able to develop that, we will be among the topmost countries in supercomputing capabilities." The department of electronics and information and technology will commission this project to C-DAC once it gets the Prime Minister's nod. The project was recently forwarded to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) by the Union ministry of human resource and development. The project may cost about 5,000 crore. Other countries which currently have the petaflop supercomputing facility include Japan, the U.S. and China.

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