AIRAWAT – India’s Leading AI Supercomputer
India has made strides in developing indigenous AI-based supercomputers as part of its National Supercomputing Mission, aimed at advancing computing capabilities for AI research, healthcare, climate science, and more.
Today, we will talk about AIRAWAT which was ranked 75th fastest supercomputer worldwide out of top 500 supercomputers in June 2023 at the International Supercomputing Conference 2023 in Germany.
AIRAWAT stands for AI Research Analytics and Knowledge Dissemination. Its Proof of Concept (PoC) was funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and implemented by C-DAC in Pune.
As a part of part of India’s National Program on AI (NPAI), AIRAWAT aligns with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of “AI FOR ALL.” It emphasizes research in AI applications, including natural language processing (NLP), image processing, and various AI-driven projects supporting national priorities covering industries like healthcare, education and national security.
The platform provides a common computational basis linking India’s technology innovation hubs, research labs and academic institutions to the national knowledge network. The convergence will heighten the development of AI-driven products and solutions that address India’s distinct issues, spanning from agriculture and education to health and safety.
The supercomputer boasts impressive capabilities with a peak performance of approximately 13 petaflops petaflops (1 petaflop is equal to 1015 floating-point operations per second). It also has a specialized AI-focused capacity of 200 petaflops in mixed precision, ranking it among the 100 global fastest AI supercomputers. This power allows AIRAWAT to handle vast datasets and conduct complex computations critical for fields such as healthcare, agriculture, and scientific research, advancing India’s technological capabilities. With plans to scale, AIRAWAT is looking to hit 1,000 petaflops and allow it to handle heavy AI workloads in areas such as NLP, image processing or video analytics. By providing this infrastructure, researchers, start-ups, and established industries can leverage AI to achieve intricate, practical applications in various industries.
Besides, other indigenous supercomputers include PARAM Siddhi-AI used in healthcare, education, space, and agriculture. Another primary one is PARAM Brahma used by Indian institutions for machine learning and data-intensive research. All of these are developed by C-DAC.
AIRAWAT’s mission is to strengthen India’s research capabilities in AI and support advancements in academia, industry, and government research initiatives. The supercomputer will play a significant role in developing AI-driven solutions that align with India’s technology and economic development goals.
