“We are going to install 73 supercomputers in different parts of the country and all will be linked by a computer grid,” said a government statement on 25 March 2015, the day the NDA government approved a Rs 4,500-crore (~ $670 million) plan towards a National Supercomputing Mission (NSM). Rs 2,800 crore would come from the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Rs 1,700 crore from the Department of IT.
Big Science
The super secretive story of India’s Rs 4500 cr supercomputing mission
No functional website, no roadmap, no stated problems to solve and above all, no table where the buck stops. If at all the work is progressing, it is by word of mouth
The 7-year National Supercomputing Mission was meant to create 73 clusters and get the industry, academics and students into the thriving world of High Performance Computing (HPC)
Two years later, not one supercomputer has been installed. More worryingly, no roadmap or vision document has been shared publicly
While money has been sanctioned, there’s no clarity how will it be spent and what are the deliverables
HPC is a strategic technology with high commercial yield. India missed the bus in early 2000s, it is poised to miss it again
