PARAM
Encyclopedia
PARAM is a series of supercomputer
s designed and assembled by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
(C-DAC) in Pune
, India
. The latest machine in the series is the PARAM Yuva.
Param means supreme in Sanskrit
.
supercomputer
s as a result of a technology embargo
, India started a program to develop an indigenous supercomputer in collaboration with Russia
. Supercomputers were considered a double edged weapon capable of assisting in the development of nuclear weapons. For the purpose of achieving self sufficiency in the field, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
(C-DAC) was by the Department of Electronics in 1988. Vijay Bhatkar was hired as the Director of C-DAC. The project given an initial run of 3 years and an initial funding of 300,000,000 . Because the same amount of money and time was usually expended to secure the purchase of a supercomputer from the US. In 1990, a prototype
was produced and was benchmarked
at the 1990 Zurich Supercomputering Show. It surpassed most other systems, placing second after US.
The final result of the effort was the PARAM 8000. which was installed in 1991. It is considered India's first supercomputer.
8000 transputers. Transputers was a fairly new and innovative microprocessor
architecture designed for parallel processing
at the time. It was a distributed memory
MIMD
architecture with a reconfigurable interconnection network. It had 64 CPUs.
coprocessor. The result was over 5 GFLOPS
at peak for vector processing. Several of these models were exported.
processor. The design was changed to be modular so that newer processors could be easily accommodated. Typically, it used 32-40 processors. But, it could be scaled up to 200 CPUs using the clos network
topology.
PARAM 9900/US was the UltraSPARC
variant and PARAM 9900/AA was the DEC Alpha
variant.
server and each such server contained two 400Mhz UltraSPARC II
processors. The base configuration had three compute nodes and a server node. The peak speed of this base system was 6.4 GFLOPS
. A typical system would contain 160 CPUs and be capable of 100 GFLOPS
But, it was easily scalable to the TFLOP
range.
) was introduced in April 2003. It had a peak speed of 1024 GFLOPS (about 1 TFLOP) and a peak storage of 1 TB
. It used 248 IBM
Power4
CPUs of 1 GHz each. The operating system
was IBM AIX 1.5L.. It used PARAMnet II as its primary interconnect. It was the first Indian supercomputer to the break the 1 TFLOP barrier.
) was unveiled in November 2008. It has a maximum sustainable speed (Rmax) of 38.1 TFLOPS and a peak speed (Rpeak) of 54 TFLOPS. There are 4608 cores in it, based on Intel 73XX of 2.9 GHz each. It has a storage capacity of 25 TB up to 200 TB. It uses PARAMnet 3 as its primary interconnect. As of 15 September 2011, it is ranked at 299 on the Top500
list
Today it is not in the List of top500
low latency
network
developed for the PARAM series. The original PARAMnet used a 8 port cascadable non-blocking switch
developed by C-DAC. Each port provided 50 Mb/s in both directions (thus 2x50 Mbit/s) as it is was a full-duplex network. It was first used in PARAM 10000.
PARAMnet II, introduced with PARAM Padma, is capable of 2.5 Gb/s while working full-duplex . It supports interfaces like Virtual Interface Architecture
and Active Messages. It uses 8 or 16 port SAN
switches
. The grid computing
network GARUDA
is also based on it.
, Singapore
, Germany
and Canada
.
PARAMs have also been sold to Tanzania
, Armenia
, Saudi Arabia
, Singapore
, Ghana
, Myanmar
, Nepal
, Kazakhstan
, Uzbekistan
, and Vietnam
.
barrier.
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
s designed and assembled by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing is a research and development organization under the Department of Information Technology, India.-History:...
(C-DAC) in Pune
Pune
Pune , is the eighth largest metropolis in India, the second largest in the state of Maharashtra after Mumbai, and the largest city in the Western Ghats. Once the centre of power of the Maratha Empire, it is situated 560 metres above sea level on the Deccan plateau at the confluence of the Mula ...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. The latest machine in the series is the PARAM Yuva.
Param means supreme in Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
.
History
After being denied CrayCray
Cray Inc. is an American supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington. The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. , was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray. Seymour Cray went on to form the spin-off Cray Computer Corporation , in 1989, which went bankrupt in 1995,...
supercomputer
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
s as a result of a technology embargo
Embargo
An embargo is the partial or complete prohibition of commerce and trade with a particular country, in order to isolate it. Embargoes are considered strong diplomatic measures imposed in an effort, by the imposing country, to elicit a given national-interest result from the country on which it is...
, India started a program to develop an indigenous supercomputer in collaboration with Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. Supercomputers were considered a double edged weapon capable of assisting in the development of nuclear weapons. For the purpose of achieving self sufficiency in the field, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing is a research and development organization under the Department of Information Technology, India.-History:...
(C-DAC) was by the Department of Electronics in 1988. Vijay Bhatkar was hired as the Director of C-DAC. The project given an initial run of 3 years and an initial funding of 300,000,000 . Because the same amount of money and time was usually expended to secure the purchase of a supercomputer from the US. In 1990, a prototype
Prototype
A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...
was produced and was benchmarked
Benchmark (computing)
In computing, a benchmark is the act of running a computer program, a set of programs, or other operations, in order to assess the relative performance of an object, normally by running a number of standard tests and trials against it...
at the 1990 Zurich Supercomputering Show. It surpassed most other systems, placing second after US.
The final result of the effort was the PARAM 8000. which was installed in 1991. It is considered India's first supercomputer.
PARAM 8000
Unveiled in 1991, PARAM 8000 used InmosINMOS
Inmos Limited was a British semiconductor company, founded by Iann Barron, with both the head office and the design office at Aztec West in Bristol, it was incorporated in November 1978.- Products :...
8000 transputers. Transputers was a fairly new and innovative microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
architecture designed for parallel processing
Parallel processing
Parallel processing is the ability to carry out multiple operations or tasks simultaneously. The term is used in the contexts of both human cognition, particularly in the ability of the brain to simultaneously process incoming stimuli, and in parallel computing by machines.-Parallel processing by...
at the time. It was a distributed memory
Distributed memory
In computer science, distributed memory refers to a multiple-processor computer system in which each processor has its own private memory. Computational tasks can only operate on local data, and if remote data is required, the computational task must communicate with one or more remote processors...
MIMD
MIMD
In computing, MIMD is a technique employed to achieve parallelism. Machines using MIMD have a number of processors that function asynchronously and independently. At any time, different processors may be executing different instructions on different pieces of data...
architecture with a reconfigurable interconnection network. It had 64 CPUs.
PARAM 8600
PARAM 8600 was an improvement over PARAM 8000. It was a 256 CPU computer. For every four Inmos 8000, it employed an Intel i860Intel i860
The Intel i860 was a RISC microprocessor from Intel, first released in 1989. The i860 was one of Intel's first attempts at an entirely new, high-end instruction set since the failed Intel i432 from the 1980s...
coprocessor. The result was over 5 GFLOPS
FLOPS
In computing, FLOPS is a measure of a computer's performance, especially in fields of scientific calculations that make heavy use of floating-point calculations, similar to the older, simpler, instructions per second...
at peak for vector processing. Several of these models were exported.
PARAM 9900/SS
PARAM 9900/SS was designed to be a MPP system. It used the SuperSPARC IISuperSPARC
The SuperSPARC is a microprocessor that implements the SPARC V8 instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems. 33 and 40 MHz versions were introduced in 1992. The SuperSPARC contained 3.1 million transistors. It was fabricated by Texas Instruments at Miho, Japan in a 0.8 micrometre...
processor. The design was changed to be modular so that newer processors could be easily accommodated. Typically, it used 32-40 processors. But, it could be scaled up to 200 CPUs using the clos network
Clos network
In the field of telecommunications, a Clos network is a kind of multistage circuit switching network, first formalized by Charles Clos in 1953, which represents a theoretical idealization of practical multi-stage telephone switching systems. Clos networks are required when the physical circuit...
topology.
PARAM 9900/US was the UltraSPARC
UltraSPARC
The UltraSPARC is a microprocessor developed by Sun Microsystems who is now a part of Oracle Corporation and fabricated by Texas Instruments that implements the SPARC V9 instruction set architecture . It was introduced in mid-1995. It was the first microprocessor from Sun Microsystems to implement...
variant and PARAM 9900/AA was the DEC Alpha
DEC Alpha
Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ISA and its implementations. Alpha was implemented in microprocessors...
variant.
PARAM 10000
In 1998, the PARAM 10000 was unveiled. PARAM 10000 used several independent nodes, each based on the Sun Enterprise 250Sun Enterprise
Sun Enterprise is a range of UNIX server computers produced by Sun Microsystems from 1996 to 2001. The line was launched as the Sun Ultra Enterprise series; the Ultra prefix was dropped around 1998. These systems were based on the 64-bit UltraSPARC microprocessor architecture and related to the...
server and each such server contained two 400Mhz UltraSPARC II
UltraSPARC
The UltraSPARC is a microprocessor developed by Sun Microsystems who is now a part of Oracle Corporation and fabricated by Texas Instruments that implements the SPARC V9 instruction set architecture . It was introduced in mid-1995. It was the first microprocessor from Sun Microsystems to implement...
processors. The base configuration had three compute nodes and a server node. The peak speed of this base system was 6.4 GFLOPS
FLOPS
In computing, FLOPS is a measure of a computer's performance, especially in fields of scientific calculations that make heavy use of floating-point calculations, similar to the older, simpler, instructions per second...
. A typical system would contain 160 CPUs and be capable of 100 GFLOPS
FLOPS
In computing, FLOPS is a measure of a computer's performance, especially in fields of scientific calculations that make heavy use of floating-point calculations, similar to the older, simpler, instructions per second...
But, it was easily scalable to the TFLOP
FLOPS
In computing, FLOPS is a measure of a computer's performance, especially in fields of scientific calculations that make heavy use of floating-point calculations, similar to the older, simpler, instructions per second...
range.
PARAM Padma
PARAM Padma (Padma means Lotus in SanskritSanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
) was introduced in April 2003. It had a peak speed of 1024 GFLOPS (about 1 TFLOP) and a peak storage of 1 TB
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...
. It used 248 IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
Power4
POWER4
The POWER4 is a microprocessor developed by International Business Machines that implemented the 64-bit PowerPC and PowerPC AS instruction set architectures. Released in 2001, the POWER4 succeeded the POWER3 and RS64 microprocessors, and was used in RS/6000 and AS/400 computers, ending a separate...
CPUs of 1 GHz each. The operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
was IBM AIX 1.5L.. It used PARAMnet II as its primary interconnect. It was the first Indian supercomputer to the break the 1 TFLOP barrier.
PARAM Yuva
PARAM Yuva (Yuva means Youth in SanskritSanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
) was unveiled in November 2008. It has a maximum sustainable speed (Rmax) of 38.1 TFLOPS and a peak speed (Rpeak) of 54 TFLOPS. There are 4608 cores in it, based on Intel 73XX of 2.9 GHz each. It has a storage capacity of 25 TB up to 200 TB. It uses PARAMnet 3 as its primary interconnect. As of 15 September 2011, it is ranked at 299 on the Top500
TOP500
The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year...
list
Today it is not in the List of top500
PARAMnet
PARAMnet is a high speed high bandwidthBandwidth
Bandwidth is the difference between the upper and lower frequencies in a contiguous set of frequencies. It is typically measured in hertz, and may sometimes refer to passband bandwidth, sometimes to baseband bandwidth, depending on context...
low latency
Latency (engineering)
Latency is a measure of time delay experienced in a system, the precise definition of which depends on the system and the time being measured. Latencies may have different meaning in different contexts.-Packet-switched networks:...
network
Local area network
A local area network is a computer network that interconnects computers in a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, or office building...
developed for the PARAM series. The original PARAMnet used a 8 port cascadable non-blocking switch
Network switch
A network switch or switching hub is a computer networking device that connects network segments.The term commonly refers to a multi-port network bridge that processes and routes data at the data link layer of the OSI model...
developed by C-DAC. Each port provided 50 Mb/s in both directions (thus 2x50 Mbit/s) as it is was a full-duplex network. It was first used in PARAM 10000.
PARAMnet II, introduced with PARAM Padma, is capable of 2.5 Gb/s while working full-duplex . It supports interfaces like Virtual Interface Architecture
Virtual Interface Architecture
The Virtual Interface Architecture is an abstract model of a user-level zero-copy network, and is the basis for InfiniBand, iWARP and RoCE...
and Active Messages. It uses 8 or 16 port SAN
System Area Network
System Area Networks are high-performance, connection-oriented networks that link computer clusters. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 uses it for high-performance connectivity through Virtual Interface Adapter . This technology is used since the advent of Windows 2000....
switches
Network switch
A network switch or switching hub is a computer networking device that connects network segments.The term commonly refers to a multi-port network bridge that processes and routes data at the data link layer of the OSI model...
. The grid computing
Grid computing
Grid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...
network GARUDA
GARUDA
GARUDA is India's Grid Computing initiative connecting 17 cities across the country. The 45 participating institutes in this nationwide project include all the IITs and C-DAC centers and other major institutes in India....
is also based on it.
Operators
PARAM supercomputers are used by both public and private operators for various purposes. As 2008, 52 PARAMs have been deployed, of these 8 are located in RussiaRussia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
.
PARAMs have also been sold to Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
, Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
, Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
, Myanmar
Myanmar
Burma , officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar , is a country in Southeast Asia. Burma is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, the Bay of Bengal to the southwest, and the Andaman Sea on the south....
, Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
, Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
, Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
, and Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
.
Future Developments
In July 2009, it was announced that C-DAC was developing a new high-speed PARAM. It is expected to be unveiled by 2012. It will be attempting to break the 1 PetaFLOPFLOPS
In computing, FLOPS is a measure of a computer's performance, especially in fields of scientific calculations that make heavy use of floating-point calculations, similar to the older, simpler, instructions per second...
barrier.
See also
- SAGA-220SAGA-220SAGA-220 is a supercomputer built by the Indian Space Research Organisation . As of May 2011, it is the fastest supercomputer in the nation with a maximum theoretical speed of 220 TFlops....
a 220 TeraFLOP supercomputer built by ISRO - EKAEKA (supercomputer)EKA is a supercomputer built by the Computational Research Laboratories with technical assistance and hardware provided by Hewlett-Packard.Eka means the number One in Sanskrit.-Design:...
India's current fastest supercomputer in the Top500 list. - Wipro SupernovaWipro SupernovaWipro Supernova is the name of a series of high-performance computing solutions offered by Wipro Infotech.-Features:The product is offered under 3 segments: entry level, mid-segment and high-end, which have varying performance and storage capacities. The entry level system costs INR 2,500,000; and...
- Supercomputing in IndiaSupercomputing in IndiaIndia's supercomputer program was started in late 1980s because Cray supercomputers were denied for import due to an arms embargo imposed on India, as it was a dual use technology and could be used for developing nuclear weapons....