Why in news? The AI Supercomputer ‘AIRAWAT’, installed at C-DAC, Pune has been ranked 75th in the world. It was declared so in the 61st edition of Top 500 Global Supercomputing List at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC 2023) in Germany. It puts India on top of AI Supercomputing nations worldwide. The system is installed under National Program on AI by Government of India.

India and applied ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE(AI) :

• Artificial Intelligence is the most promising technology in the digital age. India has a strong ecosystem and competitive advantage for AI due to its massive data availability, strong digital economy and skilled workforce.
• India has been working in the Applied AI with focus on Natural Language Processing, Image Procession, Pattern Recognition, Agriculture, Medical Imaging, Education, Health Care, Audio assistance, Robotics and developing solutions for the strategic sectors.
• India will pursue AI technology to empower citizens and organisation to solve the most pressing problems of society and economy to make the world a better place.

About AIRAWAT

• Proof of Concept (PoC) AI Research Analytics and Knowledge Dissemination Platform (AIRAWAT) of 200 AI Petaflops Mixed Precision peak compute capacity is currently funded by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology( MeitY) and implemented by C-DAC, Pune.
• The AIRAWAT PoC of 200 AI Petaflops integrated with PARAM Siddhi – AI of 210 AI Petaflops gives a total peak compute of 410 AI Petaflops Mixed Precision and sustained compute capacity of 8.5 Petaflops (Rmax) Double Precision. The peak compute capacity (Double Precision, Rpeak) is 13 Petaflops.
• AIRAWAT is in line with Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s vision of AI FOR ALL
• It may be noted that MeitY has already envisioned roadmap for scaling AIRAWAT to 1,000 AI Petaflops Mixed Precision compute capacity to cater to the current AI computational needs.
• ‘AIRAWAT’ will empower the Academia, Research Labs, Scientific Community, Industry and Start-Ups to develop indigenous AI enabled products/solutions especially for solving India specific grand challenges complex real-life problems. This AI infrastructure will enable to achieve the vision envisaged under National Program on AI (NPAI).

Supercomputers in India

• India’s first supercomputer was PARAM 8000. It was followed by PARAM Shivay, PARAM Shakti, PARAM Brahma, PARAM Yukti, and PARAM Sanganak, installed at various institutions in India.
• Previous AI supercomputer ranking In 2020, PARAM Siddhi, the High-Performance Computing-Artificial Intelligence (HPC-AI) supercomputer, achieved a global ranking of 62nd among the Top 500 most powerful supercomputer systems in the world.

The need for supercomputers

• Supercomputing is a core strength of C-DAC. Since the last three and half decades C-DAC has been carrying out R&D in Supercomputing and AI.
• The MeitY has entrusted C-DAC to deploy the supercomputers under NSM for the Indian scientific and research community.The system installed at C-DAC Pune shall also be beneficial for Digital India BHASHINI program of the Government.

About Digital  India BHASHINI

• Digital India BHASHINI is India’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) led language translation platform.
• A Bhashini Platform will make Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) resources available to MSME (Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises), Startups and Individual Innovators in the public domain.
• Bhashini Platform is a part of the National Language Translation Mission.
• The mission aims to ensure that as more Indians connect to the internet, they are able to access global content in their own languages.