Japan Building 'Zeta-Class' Supercomputer UPSC Current Affairs

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Context

According to Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT), development of a successor to the country's flagship supercomputer, Fugaku, will begin in 2025.

The supercomputer could reach speeds on a zetaFLOPS scale, which has never been achieved before.

Must read on supercomputers: https://www.iasgyan.in/daily-current-affairs/supercomputers-50

Zeta Supercomputers

They represent the next quantum leap in high-performance computing (HPC). A supercomputer with a speed of 1 zetaFLOPS could make one sextillion (1 followed by 21 zeros) calculations per second.

This is 1,000 times more powerful than today's exascale systems, which operate at the level of exaFLOPS. Achieving zettascale computing is expected to occur around 2030.

In May 2022, the global supercomputer rankings were shaken up by the launch of Frontier. Now the fastest supercomputer in the world, it can perform more than 1 quintillion (1018) floating-point operations per second. That's a 1 followed by 18 zeros, also known as an exaflop.

Features

a. A zettascale supercomputer will consume 100 megawatts of power and offer a power efficiency of about 10 teraflops per watt.

b. This will require a storage capacity of at least one zettabyte.

c. Processors are expected to use multi-chiplet designs, combining advanced CPUs with accelerators, GPUs, and memory modules.

Applications

Providing accurate global forecasts two weeks in advance.
Reducing the time required to simulate black hole mergers or supernovae from months to hours.
Modeling complex systems like the human brain, opening doors to breakthroughs in AI and medicine.

Fastest supercomputers in the world

Rank	Supercomputer	Manufacturer	Location	Rpeak (PFlop/s)
1	*Frontier*	Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)	Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA	1,714.81
2	*Aurora*	Intel	Argonne National Laboratory, USA	1,980.01
3	*Eagle*	Microsoft Azure	USA	846.84
4	*Fugaku*	Fujitsu	RIKEN Center for Computational Science, Japan	537.21
5	*LUMI*	HPE	CSC - IT Center for Science, Finland	531.51
6	*Alps*	HPE	Switzerland	353.75
7	*Leonardo*	EVIDEN	CINECA, Italy	306.31
8	*MareNostrum 5*	EVIDEN	Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Spain	249.44
9	*Summit*	IBM	Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA	200.79
10	*Eos NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD*	Nvidia	USA	188.65

Major supercomputers of India

The AI Supercomputer'AIRAWAT' and PARAM Siddhi – AI are currently the fastest supercomputers in India. AIRAWAT has been ranked 75th in the world as of June 2023.

Supercomputer	Institution	Peak Performance	Purpose/Usage
*PARAM Siddhi-AI*	Centre for Development of Advanced Computing	5.27 PFlops	AI, weather forecasting, medical research
*Pratyush*	Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology	4.0 PFlops	Climate and weather forecasting
*Mihir*	National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting	2.8 PFlops	Weather predictions and climate simulations
*SahasraT*	Indian Institute of Science (IISc)	1.46 PFlops	Aerospace engineering, molecular research, climate simulations
*AADITYA*	Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology	790 TFlops	Climate and weather predictions, specifically rainfall
*Vikram-100*	Physical Research Laboratory	300 TFlops	Space science, geophysics, solar physics
*SAGA-220*	ISRO	220 TFlops	Aerospace engineering, fluid dynamics for launch vehicles
*VIRGO*	Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras	97 TFlops	Satellite data analysis for weather prediction

READ ABOUT QUANTUM COMPUTING: https://www.iasgyan.in/daily-current-affairs/quantum-computing-38#:~:text=Instead%20of%20bits%2C%20quantum%20computers,can%20do%20is%20called%20entanglement.

Sources:

NDTV

PRACTICE QUESTION

Q:Consider the following statements in reference to Indian Supercomputers:

1. India’s first supercomputer, PARAM 8000, was developed in the late 1970s.

2. PARAM Shivay, installed at IIT (BHU), was the first supercomputer to be fully assembled in India.

Select the correct statements using the codes given below:

a) 1 only

b) 2 only

c) Both 1 and 2

d) Neither 1 nor 2

Answer: b

Explanation:

Statement 1 is incorrect: In 1991, C-DAC, had for the first time unveiled the Param 8000 supercomputer which had a speed of one giga flop (1,000 gigaflop is equivalent to one teraflop).

Statement 2 is correct: PARAM Shivay, the first supercomputer assembled indigenously,was installed in IIT (BHU), followed by PARAM Shakti, PARAM Brahma, PARAM Yukti, PARAM Sanganak at IIT-Kharagpur, IISER, Pune, JNCASR, Bengaluru and IIT Kanpur respectively.

ZETA SCALE SUPERCOMPUTERS