S. Vishnu Sharma
IIT Mandi signed a Memorandum-of-Understanding with C-DAC in Pune to establish super computing facility worth Rs 17 crore.
A supercomputer is a computer that has very high speed in its operation and higher memory.
IIT Mandi to setup great Rs 17 crore worth super comp facility
This supercomputing system can perform assigned tasks including multiple tasks at very high speeds than any other normal personal computer and in many cases are able to operate at speeds that are millions of times faster than ordinary PCs.
Professor Ajit K. Chaturvedi, director, IIT Mandi and Dr. Hemant Darbari, director general of C-DAC signed the agreement on October 12.
Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Education and Communications and Professor Ashutosh Sharma, secretary, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India were also present.
The super computer facility to be established by IIT Mandi will be of 650 TF compute power and will be utilised for research and development activities.
MoU between IIT Mandi and C-DAC is for a period of five years and can be extended by mutual agreement.
Sanjay Dhotre said the National Supercomputing Mission is an important initiative of the Government of India.
C-DAC along with the IISc, IITs and NITs, is playing an eminent role in achieving the goal of Digital India and Atmanirbhar Bharat mission, he said.
‘These MoUs will help in increasing India’s global relevance in the field of Supercomputing. I congratulate C-DAC and partner Institutes for this milestone.’
Professor Ashutosh Sharma said in the past five years, their emphasis from buying the hardware and software components of supercomputer has gone to manufacturing these components under the Atmanirbhar Bharat mission of the Government of India.
These MoUs are the strong foundation of a bright future. We are now on a path to design and fabricate the hardware and software aspects of the supercomputing facilities in India, he said.
Director of IIT Mandi Professor Ajit K. Chaturvedi, said IITs are pioneering in the field of computer science in the country.
‘With the setup of this Supercomputing facility at IIT Mandi, we are looking forward to addressing every area of science and technology.’
This supercomputer will enhance our capability in training the researchers including the faculty and students of the Institute, said Professor Ajit.
This MoU with C-DAC is a great milestone for the IIT Mandi, he added.
The super computer will be made operational for research and development purposes for users at IIT Mandi within the next four months.
The Department of Science and Technology (DST) along with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) are coordinating the project and the C-DAC is the implementing agency.
C-DAC will install the supercomputing facility in IIT Mandi with liquid-cooled racks and 200 Gigabit Infiniband connectivity.
It is notable that IIT Mandi already has an in-house High-performance Computing (HPC) heterogeneous Cluster set up in 2014.
Also read ‘NEET UG 2020 exam result will be out on October 16 after conducting reexam on October 14‘
The facility has more than 400 registered users from the research community of IIT Mandi working on applications including fluid mechanics, engineering, biotechnology, molecular dynamics, and computational chemistry, among others.
The new Supercomputing system, which will have 13 times more computing power than the current cluster, will not only boost the HPC usages and research environment in the Institute but also enhance its research capability.
For the same, the Institute is setting up a centralised supercomputing building to house the new facility along with the previous HPC cluster and Technology Innovation Hub (TIH) infrastructure.
Since the first batch of 97 students joined in July 2009, IIT Mandi has grown to currently host 125 faculty and 1,655 students who are enrolled in various programmes of studies in undergraduate, postgraduate and research programmes, and 1,141 alumni. IIT Mandi is a fully residential campus with 1.4 lakh sq. m. buildings completed.
It has a guest house with 88 rooms, an 750-seater auditorium, campus school, sports complex and hospital.
IIT Mandi has four Academic Schools and three major Research Centers.
The Schools are: School of Computing and Electrical Engineering, School of Basic Sciences, School of Engineering, and School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
The Centers are: Advanced Materials Research Centre (AMRC; set up with an investment of Rs. 60 crore), Centre for Design and Fabrication of Electrical Devices (C4DFED) has Rs. 50 crore worth of fabrication tools) and BioX Centre (has acquired research equipment worth Rs. 15 crore).
In 2017, the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, selected IIT Mandi to lead the prestigious Rs. 10 crore FarmerZone® Project.
To cater to the growing and changing needs of Indian industry and the aspirations of students, IIT Mandi has introduced 7 B.Tech., 7 M.Tech., 5 M.Sc., 4 Ph.D., 1 I-Ph.D and 1 M.A programmes in the past 10 years.
The unique, project-oriented B.Tech. curriculum is centered around its 4-year long Design and Innovation stream.
From August 2019, IIT Mandi started 3 new and unique B. Tech. programmes in Data Science and Engineering, Engineering Physics, and Dual Degree in Bioengineering.
Since the inception of the Institute, IIT Mandi faculty have been involved in over 275 Research and Development (R&D) projects worth more than Rs. 120 crore.
In the past 10 years, the Institute has signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with as many as 11 international and 12 national universities.
IIT Mandi Catalyst, first Technology Business Incubator in Himachal Pradesh, has helped over 75 startups since 2017 and is changing both the industry profile and entrepreneurial mindset in the state.
So far, Catalyst has secured external funding of Rs. 24 crore from various funding agencies. Enabling Women of Kamand Valley (EWOK) is another innovative programme run by IIT Mandi, which focuses on imparting skills training to rural women to enable them to start village-scale businesses.
IIT Mandi has been ranked no. 31 in the Engineering Institutions Category in the India Rankings 2020 released by National Institutional Ranking Framework, Ministry of Education, Government of India.