The Assam Tribune
February 11, 2016
In a major thrust to technical education in the State, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today inaugurated the C-DAC and AEC PARAM Supercomputing Facility at the Assam Engineering College at its Jalukbari campus.
This is the first facility of its kind to be set up in Assam following a collaboration between the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and the Assam Engineering College (AEC). The new C-DAC and AEC PARAM Supercomputing Facility will house the PARAM Shavak which comes in tabletop form as the world’s most compact supercomputer.
Addressing the gathering on the occasion, the Chief Minister hoped that the C-DAC would help in solving the problems of the society. Expressing concern over the problems of flood, erosion, man-animal conflict, rhino poaching, etc., Gogoi hoped that these problems would be resolved by way of data collection and analysis at the highest level.
The C-DAC and AEC PARAM Supercomputing Facility will begin operations with four units of the PARAM Shavak Supercomputing System on an immediate basis. Despite its small form, PARAM Shavak is specially designed to perform high-end computations for scientific, engineering and academic programmes.
This initiative is expected to create a skilled work force and promote research by integrating emerging technologies at the grassroot level.
Addressing reporters, Prof Rajat Moona, Director General of C-DAC stated that supercomputing has become the new paradigm for growth and development across the world. It is the key to new reforms in all sectors of the economy including manufacturing, defence, power, agriculture, communications, banking, etc. “Today, with the progress of technology, supercomputing, which had earlier been an elite technology, is now readily available for the common user, thereby multiplying its potential benefits without the high costs of investment. PARAM Shavak is an offspring of this thought process and is our answer to break though the elitist tag of supercomputing,” Prof Moona added.
Prof Gautam Barua, Mentor Director, IIT-Guwahati, said that as the scope and complexity of computational needs continue to increase at colleges and universities, professors and administrators are compelled to seek appropriate and affordable solutions. PARAM Shavak provides the computing power necessary to keep academic institutions ahead in today’s competitive market at affordable costs, he added.
Dr Hemant Darbari, Executive Director, C-DAC, commented that C-DAC is proud to partner with the Assam Engineering College that has produced so many pioneers in several branches of engineering and technology. “We are happy that the AEC has chosen to raise the bar for technical education in the State by introducing supercomputing in its academic curriculum. This is a very important step in terms of exposing the students to the latest technology and keeping them abreast of the latest trends in global technologies. Only a handful of countries, including India, have developed capabilities in utilising this technology to solve problems which are more or less out of bounds for serial computing, he added.