The Fastest Indian Supercomputer so far Unveiled

India unveils Pratyush, its fastest supercomputer yet

Question- Recently, the fastest Indian supercomputer so far unveiled by the Ministry of Earth Sciences. What is its name?
(a) Aditya
(b) Pratyush
(c) Surya
(d) Param Yuva-2
Answer: (b)
Related Facts:

  • On January 8th, 2018, Honorable Union Minister for S&T, Earth Sciences, and Environment, Forest and Climate Change Dr. Harsh Vardhan dedicated India’s fastest and first multi-petaflops supercomputer to the nation at IITM Pune.
  • The Pratyush Support Portal ( http://pratyush.tropmet.res.in/ ) was launched by Dr. M. Rajeevan , Hon’ble Secretary, MoES .
  • The supercomputer named as ‘Pratyush’ meaning the Sun.
  • It is established at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, will be a national facility for improving weather and climate forecasts and services under the umbrella of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Govt. of India.
  • With the augmentation of this new ‘Pratyush” high performance computing (HPC) facility of 6.8 Peta Flops (PF), India’s ranking will move from the 368 th position to around the top 30 in the Top 500 list of HPC facilities in the world.
  • India will also be placed at the 4 th position after Japan, UK and USA for dedicated HPC resources for weather/climate community.
  • The new HPC of 6.8 PF computational power is installed at two MoES Institutes: 4.0 Peta Flops HPC facilities at IITM, Pune and 2.8 Peta Flops facility at NCMRWF, Noida.
  • It will be used in more efficient monitoring of all natural disasters like tsunami, cyclonic storms, earthquakes etc. apart from a better prediction of monsoon in the country.
  • Apart from this, the quality of air, the fishery industry, lightening, the observation of hot and cold waves and it will be used for flood and drought preparation.
  • Actually ‘Pratush’ is a composite link for all computers, capable of calculating up to a maximum of 6.8 Petaflops.
  • It is important that one Petaflop is equal to one million billions of floating point calculations per second and it is a unit to understand the calculation capacity of the supercomputer.

Reference:
http://moes.gov.in/writereaddata/files/supercomputer_inaugration.pdf
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-unveils-pratyush-its-fastest-supercomputer-yet/article22398732.ece