India's AI supercomputer 'AIRAWAT' takes 75th spot Global Supercomputing list

The announcement was made during the 61st edition of the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC 2023) held in Germany.

In a rather great achievement for the country’s technological prowess, India’s AI supercomputer 'AIRAWAT' has grabbed the 75th position in the prestigious Top 500 Global Supercomputing List. The rankings were announced during the 61st edition of the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC 2023) held in Germany.

In alignment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of “AI for ALL”, the latest announcement has certainly put India akin to AI supercomputing nations worldwide. The installation of 'AIRAWAT' at C-DAC Pune, was in fact, part of the National Program on AI initiated by the Government of India.

Official statement

Since supercomputers amp up the computational power of multiple servers or compute devices, they can process huge amounts of data and perform complex calculations.

Earlier, Sayed Peerzade, EVP & Chief Cloud Officer, Yotta Infrastructure had informed Business Today, “HPC conducts complex calculations at high speeds across multiple servers, simultaneously. Collectively known as clusters, these groups of servers are composed of hundreds or even thousands of servers connected through a network.”

For those caught unaware, a modern laptop or desktop can perform around 3 billion calculations per second but the HPC solutions can perform quadrillions of calculations per second. However, building HPC systems can cost around minimum $25,000 and can go up to $1 billion.

“India has a strong ecosystem and competitive advantage for AI due to its massive data availability, strong digital economy and skilled workforce. India has been working in the Applied AI with focus on Natural Language Processing, Image Procession, Pattern Recognition, Agriculture, Medical Imaging, Education, Health Care, Audio assistance, Robotics and developing solutions for the strategic sectors,” Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) Secretary Alkesh Sharma, said.

President & CEO, NeGD and MeitY Additional Secretary Shri Abhishek Singh added, “Proof of Concept (PoC) AI Research Analytics and Knowledge Dissemination Platform (AIRAWAT) of 200 AI Petaflops Mixed Precision peak compute capacity is currently funded by MeitY and implemented by C-DAC, Pune.” He added that AIRAWAT is in line with the vision for the country to enable technology and Artificial Intelligence for the welfare of common people contributing to socio-economic growth of the nation.

Clearly, India is on its way to pursue AI technology to empower citizens and organisations, thereby making the world a better place, he added.