Daily Current Capsules 31st May 2022
Science and Technology
PARAM ANANTA Supercomputer commissioned
What's the NEWS

• PARAM ANANTA, a state-of the art Supercomputer at IIT Gandhinagar dedicated to the nation under National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) - a joint initiative of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and Department of Science and Technology (DST), was commissioned on May 30, 2022

Know! about PARAM ANANTA

• PARAM ANANTA supercomputing facility is established under Phase 2 of the NSM, where in majority of the components used to build this system have been manufactured and assembled within the country, along with an indigenous software stack developed by C-DAC, in line with the Make in India initiative.
• A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between IIT Gandhinagar and Centre for Development in Advanced Computing (C-DAC) on 12th October 2020 to establish this 838 TeraFlops Supercomputing Facility under NSM.
• PARAM ANANTA system is based on Direct Contact Liquid Cooling technology to obtain a high power usage effectiveness and thereby reducing the operational cost.
• Under NSM, till date 15 supercomputers have been installed across the nation with aggregate compute capacity of 24 petaflops.
• All these supercomputers have been manufactured in India and operating on indigenously developed software stack.

Supercomputers in the world

• India has so far only three supercomputers in the list and includes PARAM Siddhi AI, Pratyush and Mihir in which PARAM Siddhi features in top 100 list

National Supercomputing Mission (NSM)

• India has showcased its talent on building supercomputers at low cost with its PARAM series.
• To further enhance its capacity and to meet requirements, Government of India launched National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) in 2015.
• Under NSM, the plan was to connect R&D institutions and academic institutions in the country using a supercomputing grid with more than 70 high performance computing facilities.
• Spread over the period of seven years the estimated cost of this mission is Rs. 4,500 crores (US$ 593 million).
• Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) jointly guides the mission.
• Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is entrusted with overall design, development, deployment, and commissioning of computers build under this mission.
• Atos a French based IT services firm won the contract to build parts for the supercomputers for C-DAC.
• Supercomputers built under NSM scheme is used in following large scale applications.
• NSM Platform for Genomics and Drug Discovery.
• Urban Modelling: Science Based Decision Support Framework to Address Urban Environment Issues (Meteorology, Hydrology, Air Quality).
• Flood Early Warning and Prediction System for River Basins of India.
• HPC Software Suite for Seismic Imaging to aid Oil and Gas Exploration.
• MPPLAB: Telecom Network Optimization.

Recent developments

• So far under Phase 1 & Phase 2 total 15 systems with computer power of 22 Petaflops (PF) has been built at IIT's, C-DAC, NIT, JNCASR, and IISER.
• Recently, NSM has deployed "PARAM Ganga", a supercomputer at IIT Roorkee on 7th March 2022 with a supercomputing capacity of 1.66 Petaflops as apart of phase 2.
• Large part of the components used to build this system are manufactured and assembled in India along with a software stack developed by C-DAC as a part of make in India initiative.
• PARAM Siddhi-AI is the fastest supercomputer in India built under NSM with a capacity of 5.26 PF and according to Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, PARAM Siddhi-AI will play a key role in the nation's plan to become an AI powerhouse.
• Terminologies
• TF= Teraflops- A unit of computer speed equal to one million million (10^12) floating-point operations per second.
• PF=Petaflops- A unit used to measure multiple computer's processing speed equal to one thousand million million (10^15) floating-point operations per second.

Places in NEWS
Vice President embarks on a three-nation tour to Gabon, Senegal and Qatar

What's the NEWS

• The Vice President of India embarked on a three-nation tour of Gabon, Senegal and Qatar from 30 May to 7 June 2022.
• While Vice President's visit will be the first by any Vice President to all the three countries, the visit marks the first-ever high level visit from India to Gabon and Senegal.
• The Vice President's visit to Qatar gains prominence as the two countries prepare to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations

 

Gabon

 

• Gabon, a country along the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, has significant areas of protected parkland.
• The forested coastal terrain of its famed Loango National Park shelters a diversity of wildlife, from gorillas and hippos to whales.
• Lopé National Park consists of mostly rainforest.
• Akanda National Park is known for its mangroves and tidal beaches.

Senegal

• Senegal, officially the Republic of Senegal, is a country in West Africa. Senegal is bordered by Mauritania in the north, Mali to the east, Guinea to the southeast, and Guinea-Bissau to the southwest.

Qatar

• Qatar is a peninsular Arab country whose terrain comprises arid desert and a long Persian (Arab) Gulf shoreline of beaches and dunes.

Governance
National AI Portal (INDIAai.gov.in)

 

What's the NEWS

• The second-year anniversary of 'National AI Portal (https://indiaai.gov.in)' is celebrated on May 30, 2022.
• National AI Portal
• The National AI Portal is a joint initiative by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY), National e-Governance Division (NeGD) and NASSCOM.
• The portal focuses on creating and nurturing a unified AI ecosystem in the country to drive excellence and leadership in knowledge creation to develop an AI-ready robust workforce for the future and use AI to foster economic growth.
• It has one of the best databases on India's AI ecosystem featuring details of 121 government initiatives and 281 startups.
• Over the past two years, the portal has played a crucial role in evangelising and nurturing the AI ecosystem through numerous impactful initiatives such as the lab2market, Women in AI Roundtable, AI patent report, Responsible AI handbook for startups, Responsible AI Startups survey, podcasts, and the AI Standards.
• One of the main focuses of INDIAai's upcoming efforts is on AI Literacy.
• INDIAai released a book on the basics of AI titled ‘AI for Everyone'.
• The booklet aims to provide free and open AI literacy to the community of young minds and new learners to enable them in their aspirations beyond the digital divide.

Factoids
Gen Next Democracy Network

 

What's the NEWS

• Indian Council for Cultural Relation (ICCR) ten days programme Gen Next Democracy Network concluded.

Know! about it

• Youth from democratic countries come to India under the Gen Next Democracy Network programme.
• During the programme, they get acquainted with India's heritage, culture and functioning of Indian democracy.
• In the closing ceremony, 27 delegates from six countries- Ghana, Bangladesh, Peru, Nepal, Brunei and Norway shared their experiences of visiting India.

Know! about Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR)

• The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), is an autonomous organisation of the Government of India. The ICCR Headquarter is situated in New Delhi.
• It was founded in 1950 by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the first Education Minister of independent India.
• It is involved in India's global cultural relations, through cultural exchange with other countries and their people.
• The council also operates missions internationally, with established cultural centres in various countries.
• It also administers the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding, established by the Government of India in 1965, whose last award was in 2009.

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