Pratyush and Mihir are the

supercomputer A supercomputer is a type of 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 instruc ...

s established at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM),

Pune Pune ( ; , ISO 15919, ISO: ), previously spelled in English as Poona (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1978), is a city in the state of Maharashtra in the Deccan Plateau, Deccan plateau in Western ...

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

Noida Noida (), short for New Okhla Industrial Development Authority (ISO: ), is a city located in Gautam Buddha Nagar district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. As per provisional reports of Census of India, the population of Noida in 2011 was ...

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

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

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' () defines the rising sun. Being a

High Performance Computing High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into ...

(HPC) facility, Pratyush and Mihir consists of several

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

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, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. 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 (NCMRWF),

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

weather forecasting Weather forecasting or weather prediction 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 info ...

and

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in a region, 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 meteoro ...

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 Atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annu ...

fishing Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment (Freshwater ecosystem, freshwater or Marine ecosystem, marine), but may also be caught from Fish stocking, stocked Body of water, ...

air quality Air pollution is the presence of substances in the Atmosphere of Earth, air that are harmful to humans, other living beings or the environment. Pollutants can be Gas, gases like Ground-level ozone, ozone or nitrogen oxides or small particles li ...

, extreme events like

Tsunami A tsunami ( ; from , ) 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 underwater explosions (including detonations, ...

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 ant ...

earthquake An earthquakealso called a quake, tremor, or tembloris the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they ...

lightning Lightning is a natural phenomenon consisting of electrostatic discharges occurring through the atmosphere between two electrically charged regions. One or both regions are within the atmosphere, with the second region sometimes occurring on ...

and other natural calamities such as

flood A flood is an overflow of water (list of non-water floods, 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 of significant con ...

drought A drought is a period of 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, ...

s etc.

is the fourth country in the world to have a

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 cloud cover, cloudy. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmo ...

and

research after

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

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 Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

History

The

(HPC) facility in

has grown from 40

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

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 15919, ISO: Bhārata Sarakāra, legally the Union Government or Union of India or the Central Government) is the national authority of the Republic of India, located in South Asia, consisting of States and union t ...

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 Afr ...

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 of India. The rupee is subdivided into 100 '' paise'' (Hindi plural; singular: ''paisa''). The issuance of the currency is controlled by the Reserve Bank of India. The Reserve ...

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