IIT-M switches on petaflop supercomputer Param Shakti

To strengthen India’s goal of becoming self-reliant in advanced technology, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on Thursday launched Param Shakti, a powerful supercomputer, at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M).

Param Shakti is an indigenously built supercomputing facility with a performance of 3.1 petaflops. This makes it one of the most powerful computers in the country and an important step forward for India in the field of high-end computing.

For people who are not familiar with technical terms, a petaflop may sound confusing. Most home computers work at gigascale speeds, meaning they can perform about one billion calculations per second. A petaflop is one lakh times faster than that. It can perform 1,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second, which is one followed by 15 zeros.

Such extremely high computing power is required for complex tasks like scientific research, weather forecasting, space studies, artificial intelligence, and advanced engineering. Only a few fields, such as astronomy and large-scale computing, need machines with this level of speed.

The launch of Param Shakti will help Indian researchers and scientists carry out advanced research within the country, reduce dependence on foreign technology, and support innovation across various sectors.