which one was the india's first supercomputer????

Answer 1

param is the name of our LOVELY country's first super computer.

Answer 2

Param of course no doubt about that
u can take me as a supercomputer coz

Answer 3

Interestingly, the official No 3 of the Super 500 list is another Linux cluster Virginia Tech X, running at 10.28 teraflops and built by Srinidhi Varadarajan (CDC’s chief technology officer) and his students. In a sense, the unofficial No 2 and the official No 3 of the world’s fastest super computers are built by Indian hands!

Super computers are generally the fastest computers available at any time. They are mainly used for scientific computing — computational fluid dynamics, nuclear reactor simulation, molecular modelling, geological data processing, genomic analysis, drug discovery, finite element analysis etc. Recently, with graphics-intensive applications, the automotive industry has also become a heavy user of super computers. With the consolidation of markets and the resulting increase in size of operations, airlines, telecom companies and even banks have started using super computers.

Super computers have been around for a long time. In the ’60s and ’70s, Control Data Corporation used to be a strong player in super computing. IBM, Digital Equipment, Silicon Graphics, NEC and Fujitsu were the other leaders. One individual, Seymour Cray, exerted a strong influence in super computing for four decades, from 1971 to 1996 (when he died). As part of the Control Data Corporation, he built the CDC 6600 Series machine. This will be a pleasant surprise for many of you youngsters: Intel and AMD are talking of 64-bit computing in 2004 but CDC had a 60-bit machine in 1971! That shows the power of the ‘pioneering spirit’.

Cray had just one mission: To build the world’s fastest computer, a record that he could practically keep for 25 years, year after year without fail. When he did not find support in CDC for his next computer, he left and started Cray Research. In 1976, Cray created history through his Cray 1 computer that had a speed of 100 megaflops. He went on to build the Cray 2 with 2 gigaflops speed in 1985. Cray 3 was built in 1990 with 4.5 gigaflops speed. After the ’90s, the face of super computing changed thanks to commodity microprocessors, network computing and distributed algorithms. Cray Corporation had to file for bankruptcy in 1995!

Virginia Tech X and Thunder represent this paradigm shift. While Cray handcrafted super computers, today one can assemble ‘mass manufactured’ commodity microprocessors. Thunder is built out of 1,024 numbers of 4-processor nodes, each a commodity microprocessor from Intel (with HP partnership). Virginia Tech X is built out of 2,000 Apple G4 PowerPC processors.

Another important individual is Professor Jack Dongarra, who has been the brain behind much of the measurement of super computer speed. Using LINPACK, a set of FORTAN routines that check the speed of super computers in computing dense linear equations, Dongarra has perfected the ‘standardised way’ to measure performance of super computers; something that has been in use for nearly 25 years.

Starting from 1993, the formal measurement of speed and declaration of the Super 500 Club (the world’s largest super computers) has been systematised by Professor Hans Meuer of the University of Manheim in Germany, Horst Simon of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in Berkeley, California, and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee under the banner Super 500 (www.super500.org).

C-DAC (Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing) in Pune made us proud by assembling the first super computer from India. In 2003 C-DAC built Param Padma, the teraflop computer that joined the Super 500 club. Currently it is at the 289th position. A cursory look at the Super 500 list will show dozens of US universities, research laboratories and even corporations using the super computer. Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore and several European countries can boast of several installations of the Super 500 list. India has just two of the installations in this list — C-DAC and Intel, Bangalore. There would be so much more to do for you youngsters if India were to become an IT superpower!

Answer 4

Param.*

Answer 5

PARAM
We should feel proud cauz its completely made in India.

Answer 6

A forty-foot long slide rule.

Answer 7

param (parallel machine)

Answer 8

PARAM

Answer 9

PARAM