India’s artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer AIRAWAT (AI Research Analytics and Knowledge Dissemination Platform) located at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in Pune ranked 75 out of 500 in a global supercomputing list. This achievement positions India as a leading nation in AI supercomputing worldwide, a press release said. The installation of this system is part of the government of India’s National Programme on AI (NPAI).
Speaking about the achievement, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Secretary, Alkesh Sharma, highlighted the significance of AI in the digital era. He said that India possesses a robust ecosystem and competitive advantage in AI, thanks to its abundant data availability, thriving digital economy, and skilled workforce. India has been actively engaged in applied AI, focusing on various domains such as natural language processing, image processing, pattern recognition, agriculture, medical imaging, education, health care, audio assistance, and robotics. The country is dedicated to leveraging AI technology to empower its citizens and organisations in tackling the most critical challenges faced by society and the economy, with the aim of making the world a better place.
The release mentioned that the proof of concept (PoC) AIRAWAT of 200 AI Petaflops Mixed Precision peak compute capacity is currently funded by MeitY and implemented by C-DAC. The AIRAWAT PoC of 200 AI Petaflops integrated with PARAM Siddhi – AI of 210 AI Petaflops gives a total peak compute of 410 AI Petaflops Mixed Precision and sustained compute capacity of 8.5 Petaflops (Rmax) Double Precision. The peak compute capacity (Double Precision, Rpeak) is 13 Petaflops.
AIRAWAT aims to enable technology and AI for the welfare of society, contributing to the socioeconomic growth of the nation. MeitY has already envisioned a roadmap for scaling up AIRAWAT to 1,000 AI Petaflops Mixed Precision compute capacity to cater to the current AI computational needs.
In alignment with the government’s Self-Reliant Mission, AIRAWAT will empower the academia, research labs, scientific community, industry, and start-ups to develop indigenous AI-enabled products/solutions to solve India-specific challenges and complex real-life problems. This AI infrastructure will enable the country to achieve the vision envisaged under NPAI.
According to the press release, C-DAC has been a pioneer of high-performance computing (HPC) and AI right from its inception. The Ministry has always been supportive of the implementation of larger supercomputing systems to accelerate innovation in science and technology. It said that C-DAC should enable easy access to state-of-the-art infrastructure to the Indian community at a nominal cost.
An official noted that supercomputing is a core strength of C-DAC. Over the past three and half decades C-DAC has been carrying out research and development in supercomputing and AI. MeitY has entrusted C-DAC to deploy the supercomputers under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) for the Indian scientific and research community. The government is making consistent efforts to be at par with global standards, the official claimed.
NSM, which is spearheaded by the Department of Science and Technology and MeitY, aims to empower national academic institutions across the country by installing a supercomputing grid comprising over 70 HPC facilities. The supercomputers will also be networked on the National Supercomputing grid over the National Knowledge Network (NKN). The NKN is another programme of the government, which connects academic institutions and research and development labs over a high-speed network.
