The country will see the roll out of a R10,000 crore national supercomputing programme. The Planning Commission has recently given an in-principle approval for the national programme with an outlay of around R6,000 crore and along with other infrastructure expenses it will work out to be a R10,000 crore project.
High performance computing (HPC) has become mainstream as the next generation tool for R&D with its capability for simulation, modelling and data analysis and India will be moving forward to have more HPC, Hemant Darbari, executive director, C-DAC, said. ?There is a big demand in the country for high performance computing professionals and this will grow more in the next 5-10 years as more applications and application oriented work gets done in the area of HPC. Building machines is not enough now and the driver now will be applications and we will require a larger base to work in the area of HPC,? Darbari said. C-DAC estimates that there could be a requirement of about 15,000 HPC professionals across the government and private industry. The financial markets, pharma, aerospace and automotive industry are amongst those who have started using HPC and are demanding more applications. The HPC segment in the country is estimated to be growing at 25% a year.Companies such as IBM and HP, too, face problems while recruiting resources for their HPC requirements. There has been talks between these companies, C-DAC and government to sort this out.
Goldi Misra, group coordinator and head, HPCS Group, C-DAC, said this is a global problem with the IDC report saying that manpower is one of the biggest challenge for the HPC programme. Companies currently spend a lot of time and resources in training them and there is a long lead time, Misra added. C-DAC Pune has announced the launch a Certified HPC professional certification programme. This is for the first time such a programme has been launched anywhere in the world, Pradeep Sinha, senior director, HPC C-DAC, said. A lot of the existing systems have not been utilised fully because of the lack of trained HPC people who can understand, use, run and maintain HPC systems, Sinha said. This will also help government, R&D and IT industry to recruit the right candidates from a pool of HPC industry ready and certified professionals. About 5,000 certified HPC professionals are expected to come out of this programme in the first year.
Designed by the High Performance Computing Solutions (HPCS) Group of C-DAC, the certification exam will be conducted online, initially every three months and in due course, on-demand 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the existing C-DAC ACTS Authorised Training Centre located across India acting as prometric centers.