AI Supercomputer ‘AIRAWAT’ puts India among Top Supercomputing League

· ‘AIRAWAT’ Ranks 75th in top 500 Supercomputing List

The AI Supercomputer ‘AIRAWAT’, installed at C-DAC, Pune has been ranked 75th in the world. It was declared so in the 61st edition of Top 500 Global Supercomputing List on 23 May, 2023 at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC 2023) in Germany. It puts India on top of AI Supercomputing nations worldwide. The system is installed under National Program on AI by Government of India.

“We need to make Artificial Intelligence in India and Artificial Intelligence work for India” – Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision “AI FOR ALL”.

Speaking on this achievement, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) Secretary Alkesh Sharma said, “Artificial Intelligence is the most promising technology in the digital age. 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.” India will pursue AI technology to empower citizens and organisation to solve the most pressing problems of society and economy to make the world a better place, he added.

President & CEO, NeGD and MeitY Additional Secretary Abhishek Singh stated, “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. The AIRAWAT PoC of 200 AI Petaflops integrated with PARAM Siddhi – AI of 210 AI Petaflops gives a total peak compute of 410 AI Petaflops Mixed Precision and sustained compute capacity of 8.5 Petaflops (Rmax) Double Precision. The peak compute capacity (Double Precision, Rpeak) is 13 Petaflops.” He added that AIRAWAT is in line with vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the country to enable technology and Artificial Intelligence for the welfare of common people contributing to socio-economic growth of the nation. It may be noted that MeitY has already envisioned roadmap for scaling AIRAWAT to 1,000 AI Petaflops Mixed Precision compute capacity to cater to the current AI computational needs.

Additional Secretary, Meity Bhuvnesh Kumar said, “C-DAC has been pioneer in HPC and AI right from its inception and this entry in the top 500 list is another feather in the cap of C-DAC. The Ministry has always been supporting the implementation of such larger supercomputing systems to accelerate the innovations in science and technology. The C-DAC should enable easy access to such state-of-the-art infrastructure to the Indian community at a nominal cost.”

Ms Kavita Bhatia, Scientist – G and GC (Emerging Technologies), MeitY mentioned, “In alignment with the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative of Government of India, ‘AIRAWAT’ will empower the Academia, Research Labs, Scientific Community, Industry and Start-Ups to develop indigenous AI enabled products/solutions especially for solving India specific grand challenges complex real-life problems. This AI infrastructure will enable to achieve the vision envisaged under National Program on AI (NPAI).”

Ms Sunita Verma, Scientist – G and GC (R&D in Electronics, IT, AI & ET, Digital Bhashini), MeitY pointed out, “Supercomputing is a core strength of C-DAC. Since the last three and half decades C-DAC has been carrying out R&D in Supercomputing and AI. The MeitY has entrusted C-DAC to deploy the supercomputers under NSM for the Indian scientific and research community. We are making consistent efforts to be at par with the global standards. The system installed at C-DAC Pune shall also be beneficial for Digital India BHASHINI program of the Government.”

E Magesh, Director General, C-DAC said on the feat, “Currently being the fastest Supercomputer in the country, it is designed and architected to be on a scalable infrastructure to act as a common computational cloud platform connecting all Centres of Research Excellence in AI, Indian Centres for Transformational AI, Academic, Research Labs, Scientific Community, Industry and Start-ups. We have initiated the process of on-boarding start-ups and MSMEs working in AI domains in the country.” He congratulated C-DAC, Pune teams led by Col Asheet Kumar Nath, Executive Director, C-DAC, Pune for their excellent efforts to install this system and making it for selection to Top500 List thus making India proud.