Prathyush and Mihir are the

supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...

s established at

Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) is a scientific institution based in Pune, Maharashtra, India for expanding research in the tropical Indian Ocean with special reference to monsoon meteorology, and air-sea interaction of Sout ...

(IITM),

Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million ...

and National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (NCMRWF),

Noida Noida, short for New Okhla Industrial Development Authority, is a planned city located in Gautam Buddha Nagar district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Noida is a satellite city of Delhi and is a part of the National Capital Region (NCR) o ...

respectively. As of January 2018, Prathyush and Mihir are the fastest supercomputer in India with a maximum speed of 6.8

PetaFlops In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate meas ...

at a total cost of INR 438.9 Crore. The system was inaugurated by Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for science and technology, on 8 January 2018.The word 'Pratyush' ( hi, प्रत्युष) defines the rising sun. Being a High Performance Computing (HPC) facility, Pratyush and Mihir consists of several

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

s that can deliver a peak power of 6.8

. It is the first multi-PetaFlops

ever built in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. Pratyush and Mihir are two High Performance Computing (HPC) units. They are located at two government institutes, one being 4.0 PetaFlops unit at IITM,

and another 2.8 PetaFlops unit at the

National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) is a national agency for weather forecasting under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, (transferred from its former parent Ministry of Science and Technology), Government of India. It is ...

(NCMRWF),

. They provide a combined output of 6.8 PetaFlops. Pratyush and Mihir are used in the fields of

weather forecasting Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology forecasting, to predict the conditions of the Earth's atmosphere, atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia a ...

and

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologic ...

monitoring in India. It helps the country to make better forecasts in terms of

Monsoon A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annual latitudinal oscil ...

fishing Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs. Fishing techniques inclu ...

, air quality, extreme events like

Tsunami A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explo ...

cyclone In meteorology, a cyclone () is a large air mass that rotates around a strong center of low atmospheric pressure, counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere as viewed from above (opposite to an anti ...

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...

lightning Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electric charge, electrically charged regions, both in the atmosphere or with one on the land, ground, temporarily neutralize themselves, causing the instantaneous ...

and other natural calamities such as

flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

s etc.

is the fourth country in the world to have a High Performance Computing facility dedicated for

weather Weather is the state of the atmosphere, describing for example the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmosphere, the ...

and

research after

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

History

The High Performance Computing (HPC) facility in

has grown from 40

TeraFlops In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate meas ...

in 2008 to 1

in the year 2013-14. But India still remained at a lower position in terms of HPC infrastructure rankings in the world.

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...

approved 400 crore

Rupees Rupee is the common name for the currencies of India, Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka, and of former currencies of Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates (as the Gulf rupee), British East Africa, B ...

in 2017 to build a supercomputer with a computing capacity of 10 PetaFlops. The engineers of IITM, Pune worked under the leadership of Suryachandra A Rao and built Pratyush in 2018. The overall cost was around 450 crore

Indian Rupee The Indian rupee ( symbol: ₹; code: INR) is the official currency in the republic of India. The rupee is subdivided into 100 ''paise'' (singular: ''paisa''), though as of 2022, coins of denomination of 1 rupee are the lowest value in use wh ...

s. With the introduction of Pratyush and Mihir, India hopes to move from the 165th position to gain a position in the top 30s in the Top500 list of supercomputers in the world.

Notes

References

{{reflist Information technology in India Supercomputing in India Meteorology research and field projects India Meteorological Department 2018 establishments in Maharashtra Computer-related introductions in 2018

History

See also

Notes

References