PARAM is a series of Indian supercomputers designed and assembled by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in Pune. of the machines that ran at the show it came second only to one from the United States. Apart from taking over the home market, PARAM attracted 14 other buyers with its relatively low price tag of $350,000.

The computer was also exported to the ICAD Moscow in 1991 under Russian collaboration.

PARAM 8600

PARAM 8600 was an improvement over PARAM 8000. In 1992 C-DAC realised its machines were underpowered and wished to integrate the newly released Intel i860 processor. A typical system would contain 160 CPUs and be capable of 100 GFLOPS But, it was easily scalable to the TFLOP range. Exported to Russia and Singapore.

Further computers

Further computers were made in the PARAM series as one-off supercomputers, rather than serial production machines. From the late 2010s many machines were created as part of the National Supercomputing Mission.

Supercomputer summary

{| class="wikitable sortable"

|+PARAM Timeline

! Name

! Release year

! Notes

! Rmax

! Rpeak

! Location

|-

| PARAM 8000

| 1991

| Inmos T800 Transputers, Distributed Memory MIMD, 64 processors

|

|

| Multiple

|-

| PARAM 8600

| 1992

| Improved version of PARAM 8000. Intel i860, 256 processors. Each 8600 cluster was as powerful as 4 PARAM 8000 clusters.

| 5 GFLOPS

|

| Multiple

|-

| PARAM 9900

| 1994

| Clos network. SuperSPARC II, UltraSPARC and DEC Alpha variants, 32 to 200 processors

|

|

| Multiple

|-

| PARAM 10000

| 1998

| Sun Enterprise 250, 400Mhz UltraSPARC UltraSPARC II processor, 160 processors

| 6.4 GFLOPS

|

| Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Prayagraj

|-

| PARAM Padma

| 2002

| 54 TFLOPS Intel is the original equipment manufacturer and NetWeb technologies is the system integrator. It is interconnected with Indian Institute of Technology and National Institute of Technology via National Knowledge Network.

| 360.8 TFLOPS

| 524 TFLOPS

| C-DAC Pune

|-

| PARAM Kanchenjunga

| 2016

| Cost ₹3 crore.

| 15 TFLOPS

|

| National Institute of Technology, Sikkim

|-

|PARAM Ishan

|2016

|Storage 300TB based on Lustre.

|

|IIT Guwahati

|-

|PARAM Bio-Embryo

|

|

|100 TFLOPS

|

|Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Pune

|-

|PARAM Bio-Inferno

|

|India's first HPC system that uses the Fujitsu A64fx- NSP1 CPU, an ARM processor with 48 cores and a speed of 1.8 GHz

|100 TFLOPS

|

|C-DAC Pune

|-

|PARAM Shivay

|2019

|192 CPU compute nodes, 20 High memory nodes, 11 GPU compute nodes. Cost ₹32.5 crore.

|0.43 PFLOPS

|0.84 PFLOPS

|IIT (BHU) Varanasi

|-

| PARAM Brahma

| 2019

| 1PB storage. Uses Direct Contact Liquid Cooling.

| 2020

| Nvidia DGX SuperPOD based networking architecture, HPC-AI engine software frame works and cloud platform from C-DAC

| 4.6 PFLOPS

| 5.267 PFLOPS

| C-DAC Pune

|-

| PARAM Sanganak

| 2020

|

|

| 1.67 PFLOPS

| IIT Kanpur

|-

|PARAM Yukti

|2020

|

|

|27 TFLOPS

|C-DAC Pune

|-

|PARAM Utkarsh

|2021

|Based on Intel Cascade Lake processor and Nvidia Tesla V100 GPU with 100 Gbit/s infiniband non-blocking interconnect

|838 TFLOPS

|

|C-DAC Bengaluru

|-

|PARAM Smriti

|2021

|

|

|838 TFLOPS

|National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute, Mohali

|-

|PARAM Seva

| 2022

| It runs on CentOS 7.x, has 4PB storage, Intel Xeon Cascade Lake processors and Nvidia Tesla V100.

| 2022

|

|

| 1.67 PFLOPS

| IIT Roorkee

|-

| PARAM Shakti

| 2022

|

| 850 TFLOPS

|1.66 PFLOPS

| IIT Kharagpur

|-

|PARAM Ananta

|2022

|

|

|838 TFLOPS

|IIT Gandhinagar

|-

|PARAM Himalaya

| 2022

|107 CPU nodes, 10 GPU nodes, 9 high memory nodes, 740 CPU cores, 102400 CUDA cores. It runs on low and high microwave power with active and passive high energy source. Liquid cooling.

|838 TFLOPS

|1.5 PFLOPS

|IIT Guwahati

|-

|PARAM Porul

|2022

|107 CPU nodes, 10 GPU nodes, 39 high memory nodes, 102400 CUDA cores.

|

|838 TFLOPS

|National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli

|-

|PARAM Vidya

|8.5 PFLOPS

|13 PFLOPS

|C-DAC Pune

|-

|Param System

|2024

|

|

|50 AI PF/1.3 PF

|NIC Delhi

|-

|PARAM Rudra Cost ₹130 crore.

|

|

|Multiple

PARAMNet-3, used in PARAM Yuva and PARAM Yuva-II, is next generation high performance networking component for building supercomputing systems. PARAMNet-3 consists of tightly integrated hardware and software components. The hardware components consist of Network Interface Cards (NIC) based on CDAC's fourth generation communication co-processor "GEMINI", and modular 48-port Packet Routing Switch "ANVAY". The software component "KSHIPRA" is a lightweight protocol stack designed to exploit capabilities of hardware and to provide industry standard interfaces to the applications. Other application areas identified for deployment of PARAMNet-3 are storage and database applications.

Operators

PARAM supercomputers are used by both public and private operators for various purposes. As of 2008, 52 PARAMs have been deployed. Of these, 8 are located in Russia, Singapore, Germany and Canada.

PARAMs have also been sold to Tanzania, Armenia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Ghana, Myanmar, Nepal, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

See also

  • EKA
  • SAGA-220, a 220 TeraFLOP supercomputer built by ISRO
  • Supercomputing in India
  • Wipro Supernova

Notes

References

  • PARAM Padma information page from C-DAC website
  • National Supercomputing Mission, INDIA