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Fugaku Supercomputer

Posted on March 13, 2021 by admin1  68

In News

The world’s most powerful supercomputer Fugaku is fully developed in Japan. This marks the end of a seven-years long development procedure for Fugaku, which started developing in 2014 in collaboration with Fujitsu.

About Fugaku

  • The computer has 100 times the application performance of the K supercomputer and is developed to implement high-resolution, long-duration and large-scale simulations.
  • Fugaku has topped the Top500 list, a supercomputer benchmark index, for two consecutive years.
  • A portion of Fugaku’s research is said to be dedicated to COVID-19 related projects.
  • It aims to make the device core of Japan’s computing infrastructure.
    • It will help in building a long-lived and healthy society.

 Supercomputer

  • The supercomputer is a computer with a high-level computational capacity compared to a general-purpose computer.
  • The performance of a supercomputer is measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS).
  • They are expensive and are employed for specialized applications that require immense amounts of mathematical calculations (number crunching).
    •  For example, weather forecasting requires a supercomputer.
    • Other uses of supercomputers scientific simulations, (animated) graphics, fluid dynamic calculations, nuclear energy research, electronic design, and analysis of geological data (e.g. in petrochemical prospecting).
  • Japanese supercomputer Fugaku (442 petaflops) and IBM’s Summit (148.8 petaflops) are the two most powerful supercomputers in the world.

Supercomputer in India

  • Mihir: Mihir (146th on the list), clubs with Pratyush to generate enough computing power to match PARAM-Siddhi.
  • PARAM-Siddhi: It is the second Indian supercomputer to be entered in the top 100 on the Top500 list.
    • The supercomputer was established earlier this year, under the National Supercomputer Mission (NSM) and is going to be installed in the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing’s (C-DAC) unit.
  • Pratyush: It is a supercomputer used for weather forecasting at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, ranked 78th on the November edition of the list.

Application of Supercomputing

  • Weather Forecasting
  • Scientific Research
  • Data Mining

Challenges of Supercomputing in India

  • Lack of Research & Development in India.
  • Lack of Funding.
  • Limited manufacturing of electronics used in Supercomputing missions.

National Supercomputing Mission (NSM)

  • The mission would be implemented jointly by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) through two organizations the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore.
  • It was launched in 2015.
  • Objective– To make India one of the world leaders in Supercomputing and to enhance India’s capability in solving grand challenge problems of national and global relevance.
    • To attain global competitiveness and ensure self-reliance in the strategic area of supercomputing technology.

About C-DAC

  • It is the premier R&D organization of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) for carrying out R&D in IT, Electronics and associated areas.
  • PARAM 8000, the first supercomputer of India, was built by CDAC.
  • It was established after the denial of import of the Cray Supercomputer (dual-use technology which could be used for nuclear weapon simulation), due to the arms embargo.

Source :TH


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