The AI supercomputer called ‘AIRAWAT’ installed at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in Pune, India, has been ranked 75th in the world. This ranking was announced at the 61st edition of the Top 500 Global Supercomputing List during the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC 2023) in Germany. With this achievement, India now leads as one of the top AI supercomputing nations globally. The installation of AIRAWAT is part of the National Program on AI initiated by the Government of India.
The Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), Shri Alkesh Sharma, highlighted the potential of artificial intelligence as the most promising technology in the digital age. He stated that India possesses a strong ecosystem and competitive advantage for AI due to its abundant data availability, robust digital economy, and skilled workforce. The country has been actively working on applied AI in various sectors such as natural language processing, image processing, pattern recognition, agriculture, medical imaging, education, healthcare, audio assistance, and robotics. The aim is to develop solutions for strategic sectors and empower citizens and organizations to address society’s pressing challenges and improve the world.
Shri Abhishek Singh, President & CEO of the National e-Governance Division (NeGD) and Additional Secretary at MeitY, mentioned that AIRAWAT is a Proof of Concept (PoC) AI Research Analytics and Knowledge Dissemination Platform. It has a compute capacity of 200 AI petaflops in mixed precision and is currently funded by MeitY and implemented by C-DAC, Pune. The integration of AIRAWAT with PARAM Siddhi – AI, which has a compute capacity of 210 AI petaflops, brings the total peak compute capacity to 410 AI petaflops in mixed precision. The sustained compute capacity (Rmax) in double precision is 8.5 petaflops, while the peak compute capacity (Rpeak) is 13 petaflops. There are plans to scale AIRAWAT to a compute capacity of 1,000 AI petaflops to meet the current AI computational needs.
C-DAC, a pioneer in high-performance computing (HPC) and AI, has been instrumental in the development of supercomputing infrastructure in India. The Ministry has been supportive of implementing such large-scale supercomputing systems to accelerate innovation in science and technology. The focus is on providing easy access to state-of-the-art infrastructure to the Indian community at an affordable cost.
The AI infrastructure provided by AIRAWAT, known as ‘AI for All,’ will empower academia, research labs, the scientific community, industry, and startups to develop indigenous AI-enabled products and solutions to address India-specific challenges and complex real-life problems. It aligns with the vision of the National Program on AI (NPAI) and the Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self-Reliant India) initiative.
C-DAC aims to create a scalable infrastructure with AIRAWAT as the fastest supercomputer in the country. This infrastructure will act as a common computational cloud platform connecting research excellence centers, Indian centers for transformational AI, academic institutions, research labs, the scientific community, industry, and startups. C-DAC has initiated the onboarding process for startups and MSMEs working in AI domains in the country.
The achievement of AIRAWAT and its inclusion in the Top 500 List was celebrated by Shri E Magesh, Director General of C-DAC, who praised the efforts of the C-DAC, Pune teams, led by Col Asheet Kumar Nath, Executive Director, for their excellent work in installing the system and making India proud.
