Ministry of Earth Sciences signs $100 mn contract with Eviden to deliver two supercomputers

France-based advanced computing firm Eviden has been awarded a $100 million worth of contract from the Ministry of Earth Sciences in India to deliver two new supercomputers for weather modelling and climate research. These supercomputers are expected to triple the computing capacity of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) and the National Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (NCMRWF).

“With a very dynamic growth and a high-quality technological ecosystem, India is a key country for the HPC industry, positioning itself as a frontrunner on the market. The expertise of IITM and NCMRWF combined with the experience of Eviden in delivering the most powerful HPC systems designed for Weather Modelling will provide a unique system ready to tackle the most difficult climate research challenges,” said Jean-Philippe Poirault, chief executive officer of Big Data and Security, Eviden. Eviden is a business under IT service company Atos, and offers digital services and security.

These systems will be based on Eviden’s BullSequana XH2000 supercomputers with a capacity of 21.3 Petaflops.

The NCMRWF Noida site will get a supercomputer with 8.3-Petaflop computing capacity for weather and climate modelling and advanced numerical weather research across India. It uses Nvidia A100 Tensor Core GPUs and  the Nvidia Quantum InfiniBand networking platform, along with high-performance memory provided by Micron. The second supercomputer to be placed at IITM, Pune will provide 13 Petaflops of power for atmosphere and climate research.

In 2018, the Earth Sciences ministry installed two high-performance computing (HPC) systems – Pratyush and Mihir – at IITM Pune and NCMRWF at a total cost of ₹ 438.9 crore. The two supercomputers have a total computing capacity of  6.8 petaflops.