C-DAC to tap export markets

BANGALORE: Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), which makes supercomputers, is aiming to carve an export market for its latest offering, a top official said. The firm's new supercomputer called PARAM-Padma with a processing speed of one teraflop, or one trillion calculations per second, is expected to be launched in about a month.

"We are pricing it at about $5 million," R. K. Arora, executive director, told Reuters, on the sidelines of an Asian conference on high performance computing. "It is at least half the cost of other machines in the market internationally because we have a cost advantage."

The supercomputer used for heavy-duty applications such as weather forecasting and bioinformatics was 10 times as powerful as C-DAC's previous machine, which handles 100 billion calculations per second. C-DAC has built four versions of its PARAM series of supercomputer machines as it moves to catch up with global leaders including the United States, Japan, Israel and China.

The United States earlier this year placed orders from International Business Machines for two supercomputers, valued at up to around $267 million, one of which will have a processing speed of 100 teraflops. "We are discussing some projects for the PARAM-Padma series and a modified version of the previous machine," Arora said. C-DAC has previously exported about 20 of its PARAM supercomputers to research organisations and universities and the private sector in Russia, Germany, Canada and Singapore, he said.

Founded in 1998, C-DAC faced more than a decade of technology export restrictions by the United States, particularly related to the Cray supercomputer, on the grounds that India might put the technology to military use. The curbs are now off.

© Reuters