Supercomputing & High-Performance Computing
Supercomputing relies on massively parallel processing architectures to execute trillions of high-precision floating-point operations per second (FLOPS), measured biannually by the global TOP500 benchmark. Frontier, deployed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States, became the world's first officially verified exascale supercomputer in 2022, exceeding one quintillion calculations per second ($10^{18}$ FLOPS). India's National Supercomputing Mission (NSM), jointly steered by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and executed by C-DAC and IISc, has deployed indigenous systems like PARAM Shivay, PARAM Shakti, PARAM Pravega, and the AI supercomputer AIRAWAT.
Key Concepts & Examination Highlights
- Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory became the world's first verified exascale supercomputer on the TOP500 list in June 2022.
- India's National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) is jointly implemented by C-DAC and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).
- AIRAWAT, installed at C-DAC Pune, is India's leading AI-dedicated high-performance supercomputing system on the TOP500 rankings.