C-DAC was set-up in 1988 with the explicit purpose of demonstrating India's HPC capability after the US government denied the import of technology for weather forecasting purposes. Since then, C-DAC's developments have mirrored the progress of HPC computing worldwide.

During the second mission, C-DAC advented the Open Frame Architecture for cluster computing culminating in the PARAM 10000 in 1998 and the 1TF PARAM Padma in 2002.