The Indian ministers might be embroiled in corruption accusations, yet it does not stop them from making ambitious plans for the country. In one way, that’s actually good. But if you think of it as another scam in the making, then I got a valid point. Okay! So, let me come to the point – India may invest Rs 6,000 Crores (approx $ 1330 Million) for the research and development of supercomputers. That’s what the Minister of State for Science and Technology, Mr. Ashwani Kumar said, according to this report:
This is over and above the Rs 5,000 Crore allocation proposed in the 12th Plan for research and development of supercomputers. There were proposals to double the government expenditure in research and development during the 12th Plan period.
Aah. Now, 5000 Crores is a big number. I hope the minister has his numbers correct. So, why are they going to spend so much? Well, here’s the answer:
The Government wants us to have the best computing, and so wants to spend the money on research and development of supercomputers. And, they might shell the money as well – they are serious about it. A senior official was quoted as saying:
I expect the Rs 5000 crore allocation for supercomputers to get the nod of the Planning Commission but was skeptical on funding for exa-scale computing.
So, we are not going to do exa-scale computing research and still spend Rs 6000 Crores. I wonder!
Supercomputing Research Worth Rs 6000 Crores :O
Recently, ISRO was reported to have built India’s fastest supercomputer known as “SAGA-220” (Supercomputer for Aerospace with GPU Architecture-220 TeraFLOPS). The supercomputer, which is used by space scientists for solving complex aerospace problems, is at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), and was built at a cost of Rs 14 Crore.
Now, my question is a simple one. Please pardon me if I am wrong, but I feel that if we were able to build India’s fastest supercomputer in just Rs 14 Crores, what kind of research are we going to do with Rs 6000 Crores? Maybe, the ministry has some big plans for the country. Research is for sure needed though, as the fastest supercomputer in India is actually not fast enough. The worlds fastest computer, Tianhe-1A has a peak performance of 2566 TeraFLOPS whereas SAGA-220 gives a peak performance of 172.61 TeraFLOPS.
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