Be Mains Ready

Approach

• Give a brief idea on India’s Supercomputing Mission.
• Mention its objectives.
• Enumerate its advantages and challenges.

Introduction

• National Supercomputing Mission is an important initiative by the Government of India to boost indigenous efforts at improving supercomputing capability for socio-economic development of the nation.
• The mission is jointly steered by the Ministry of Electronics and IT and Department of Science & Technology.

Body

Objectives of the Mission

• Strengthening Institutional Capacity: The Mission aims to empower the national academic and R&D institutions spread over the country by installing a vast supercomputing grid comprising of more than 70 high-performance computing facilities.
• Pooling supercomputing resources: These supercomputers will also be networked on the national supercomputing grid over the National Knowledge Network (NKN), Academic and R&D institutions, as well as key user departments/ministries, would participate by using these facilities and develop applications of national relevance.
• Capacity Building: The Mission includes the development of highly professional High-Performance Computing (HPC) aware human resource for meeting challenges of development of these applications.

Significance

• It will provide significant qualitative and quantitative improvement in R&D and higher education in the disciplines of Science & Technology.
• The mission will bring India into the select league of advanced countries such as the US, Japan, China and the European Union (EU) which share top supercomputing machines in the world.
• Supercomputing facilities will enable India to build capabilities in areas such as designing vehicles, aeroplanes, massive structures like high rise buildings and bridges, infrastructure, the discovery of new life-saving drugs, discovery and extraction of new energy sources including oil, natural gas etc.
• It will enable more accurate weather forecast as well as real time tracking of natural phenomenon, timely warning of cyclones etc.
• It would be an enabler for the Digital India vision of the Government by making available huge data storage space and linking systems together.
• The mission envisages manufacturing of supercomputing systems in India contributing to Make in India and generating employment.

Challenges

• There has been a continuous delay in implementing programme·
  
  • India lacks highly skilled workforce for supercomputer development.
  • India needs to work on policies to attract talent from all over the world as well as retaining the indigenously available talent through financial and other incentives.
  • India is facing a funding crunch for the mission.
  • While India’s stronghold is in the field of software development, it has to depend on imports to procure the hardware components required for building supercomputers

Conclusion

National Supercomputing Mission is a timely effort to ensure India does not lag in new area as Industry 4.0 transforms the way of doing work, equipping Indian R&D establishment to develop and master newer technological applications to resolve developmental challenges India is facing.