Context: Recently, Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bengaluru has commissioned one of the most powerful supercomputers, called “Param Pravega” in India.
Key Specification

• It is one of the most powerful supercomputers in India, and the largest in an Indian academic institution, under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM). 
• The system is expected to power diverse research and educational pursuits. It has a supercomputing capacity of 3.3 petaflops (1015 operations per second).
• The system is developed to operate using Linux OS, based on CentOS 7.x distribution.
• It has been designed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). 
• A majority of the components used to build this system have been manufactured and assembled within India.

Purpose of commissioning of supercomputer

• Param Pravega supercomputer has been commissioned in the institution under National Supercomputing Mission (NSM). 
• It has been commissioned to power diverse research and educational pursuits from entire India. 
• Under NSM, 10 supercomputer systems have been established so far in India, with a cumulative computing power of 17 petaflops.

About National Supercomputing Mission (NSM)

• The mission was announced in 2015.
• NSM envisaged setting up a network of 70 high-performance computing facilities with an aim to connect national academic and R&D institutions across India over a seven-year period at an estimated cost of Rs 4500 Crores.
• Parent Body: Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) and Department of Science and Technology (DST).
• Nodal Agencies of NSM: Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.
• Under NSM, the long-term plan is to build a strong base of 20,000 skilled persons over the next five years who will be equipped to handle the complexities of supercomputers.

In 2020, a RTI reply revealed that India has produced just three supercomputers since 2015 under NSM

• PARAM Shivay installed in IIT-BHU, Varanasi with 837 TeraFlop capacity
• Second one at IIT-Kharagpur with 1.66 PetaFlop capacity
• PARAM Brahma at ISER-Pune, has a capacity of 797 TeraFlop