India's AI supercomputer named 'AIRAWAT' has achieved an impressive milestone by securing the 75th position on the renowned Top 500 Global Supercomputing List. The announcement was made during the 61st edition of the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC 2023) held in Germany. This accomplishment aligns with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of "AI for ALL" and positions India as a leading nation in AI supercomputing worldwide.
The installation of 'AIRAWAT' at C-DAC Pune is part of the Government of India's National Program on AI. Supercomputers harness the computational power of multiple servers or computing devices to process vast amounts of data and perform complex calculations. In comparison to a modern laptop or desktop, which can perform around 3 billion calculations per second, supercomputers offer significantly higher capabilities, reaching quadrillions of calculations per second.
However, building and maintaining HPC (High-Performance Computing) systems can be a costly endeavour, ranging from $25,000 to $1 billion, including operational expenses. Artificial intelligence has emerged as a highly promising technology in recent months, and India has a strong ecosystem and competitive advantage in this field due to its abundant data, robust digital economy, and skilled workforce.
The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) Secretary, Alkesh Sharma, highlighted India's focus on applied AI in various domains such as natural language processing, image processing, pattern recognition, agriculture, medical imaging, education, healthcare, audio assistance, and robotics. The aim is to leverage AI technology to address critical societal and economic challenges, making a positive impact on the world.
The AIRAWAT Proof of Concept (PoC) is a remarkable achievement, with 200 AI Petaflops integrated with PARAM Siddhi - AI of 210 AI Petaflops, resulting in a total peak compute capacity of 410 AI Petaflops Mixed Precision and sustained compute capacity of 8.5 Petaflops (Rmax) Double Precision. The future plan, as envisioned by MeitY, is to scale AIRAWAT to 1,000 AI Petaflops Mixed Precision compute capacity to meet the growing computational needs of AI.
The President & CEO of NeGD and Additional Secretary of MeitY, Shri Abhishek Singh, emphasized that the Proof of Concept (PoC) AI Research Analytics and Knowledge Dissemination Platform (AIRAWAT) with a peak compute capacity of 200 AI Petaflops Mixed Precision is currently funded by MeitY and implemented by C-DAC, Pune. He stated that AIRAWAT aligns with the vision of leveraging technology and artificial intelligence for the betterment of society, contributing to the socioeconomic growth of the nation. MeitY has already laid out a roadmap to scale AIRAWAT's compute capacity to 1,000 AI Petaflops Mixed Precision to meet the present AI computational requirements.
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