Minister of Earth Sciences Kiren Rijiju he is apparently upset French IT company Atos. The reason is said to be a delay in the delivery of two supercomputers by a French company Indian Weather Forecasting Institutes. According to the PTI news agency, Ministry of Earth Sciences last year, it ordered two supercomputers worth $100 million from the French company Eviden of the Atos Group to raise the computing capabilities of its institutions – the National Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (NCMRWF) and Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM).
“I am more nervous because we have set December as our target. The Union Cabinet has already approved the purchase of the supercomputer. We only have four petaflops of computing power. We want to install a computer with a performance of up to 18 petaflops,” Rijiju said in a video interview with PTI.
He said the French company had run into financial difficulties and demanded that the government pay its subsidiary.
Minister says delay ‘worries’ him
Rijiju said the delay had caused him a lot of worry as the company had missed its schedule. “But I think we will solve it soon,” he said, adding that the government wants to “take its position very rightly in legal terms.”
“We are ready to pay the money because we want the machine right away. The only problem is that the amount is not miniature. So if we pay now, if the company goes bankrupt or something happens, who will save it,” said the minister.
Rijiju further added that the government is taking some steps to expedite the delivery of the supercomputer, but did not provide any details. “But I hope that the French government will also intervene because we have good understanding and very good relations with the French government.
“Since this is exorbitant equipment, we want to make sure the transaction is done correctly and correctly,” he said.
“Everything is ready from the outside. The problem only affects the main company. They want us to pay their subsidiary. We will only pay the company with which we have entered into an MoU,” Rijiju said.
The supercomputer system based on Eviden’s BullSequana XH2000 processor is said to have a total power of up to 21.3 petaflops.
Supercomputer at IITM
The supercomputer at IITM, Pune will provide 13 petaflops of computing power for atmospheric and climate research. According to the PTI report, it will integrate 3,000 CPU nodes using AMD EPYC 7643 processors and 26 GPU nodes via NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs. The system will exploit the NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand networking platform with network processing, 3 PB all-flash storage and 29 PB EXAScaler ES400NVX2 DDN disk storage and advanced Micron memory.
The existing computing power in NCMRWF is 2.8 petaflops and in IITM 4 petaflops, respectively.
“I am more nervous because we have set December as our target. The Union Cabinet has already approved the purchase of the supercomputer. We only have four petaflops of computing power. We want to install a computer with a performance of up to 18 petaflops,” Rijiju said in a video interview with PTI.
He said the French company had run into financial difficulties and demanded that the government pay its subsidiary.
Minister says delay ‘worries’ him
Rijiju said the delay had caused him a lot of worry as the company had missed its schedule. “But I think we will solve it soon,” he said, adding that the government wants to “take its position very rightly in legal terms.”
“We are ready to pay the money because we want the machine right away. The only problem is that the amount is not miniature. So if we pay now, if the company goes bankrupt or something happens, who will save it,” said the minister.
Rijiju further added that the government is taking some steps to expedite the delivery of the supercomputer, but did not provide any details. “But I hope that the French government will also intervene because we have good understanding and very good relations with the French government.
“Since this is exorbitant equipment, we want to make sure the transaction is done correctly and correctly,” he said.
“Everything is ready from the outside. The problem only affects the main company. They want us to pay their subsidiary. We will only pay the company with which we have entered into an MoU,” Rijiju said.
The supercomputer system based on Eviden’s BullSequana XH2000 processor is said to have a total power of up to 21.3 petaflops.
Supercomputer at IITM
The supercomputer at IITM, Pune will provide 13 petaflops of computing power for atmospheric and climate research. According to the PTI report, it will integrate 3,000 CPU nodes using AMD EPYC 7643 processors and 26 GPU nodes via NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs. The system will exploit the NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand networking platform with network processing, 3 PB all-flash storage and 29 PB EXAScaler ES400NVX2 DDN disk storage and advanced Micron memory.
The existing computing power in NCMRWF is 2.8 petaflops and in IITM 4 petaflops, respectively.
