Sibal praises C-DAC for making supercomputing history

PARAM Yuva II supercomputer has been ranked first in India, ninth in the Asia Pacific Region and 44th in the world among the most power efficient computer systems

Union Communications and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal has congratulated the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) for achieving a significant milestone with the PARAM Yuva II supercomputer.

The supercomputer has been ranked first in India, ninth in the Asia Pacific Region and 44th in the world among the most power efficient computer systems as per the Green500 List announced at the Supercomputing Conference (SC'2013) in Denver, Colorado, USA.

PARAM Yuva - II uses hybrid technology - processor, co-processor and hardware accelerators - to provide the peak compute power of 520.4 Teraflop/s using 210 kiloWatt power. The interconnect network comprises of homegrown PARAMNet-III and Infiniband FDR System Area Network. This system is designed to solve large and complex computational problems. The system has 200 Terabytes of high performance storage, and requisite system software and utilities for parallel applications development.

Sibal said that supercomputing is very important for the all round advancements in the country, and added that the UPA-II Government is planning a big impetus for capacity building and advanced research and development in this area.

He said that he would expect many more contributions from C-DAC, as a key player, in this endeavour.

Supercomputers, in general, consume a lot of electrical power and produce much heat that necessitates elaborate cooling facilities to ensure proper operation.

This adds to increase in the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a supercomputer. To draw focus towards development of energy efficient supercomputers, Green500 ranks computer systems in the world according to compute performance per watt, thus providing a world ranking based on energy efficiency.

Energy consumed by supercomputers is measured at various Levels - L1, L2, L3 - for purpose of reporting. As the level increases, accuracy and rigor of measurement exercise also increases.

It is also a measure of our capability and noteworthy that C-DAC is the second organization worldwide to have carried out the Level 3 measurement of Power versus Performance for the Green500 List.