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BRICS On High Performance Computing (HPC)

Posted on May 31, 2021 by admin1  293

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Under the Science, Technology, and Innovation track, the Fifth BRICS Working Group meeting on High Performance Computing (HPC) and Information Communication Technologies (ICT) was held recently.

About

  • All five BRICS countries Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, participated.
  • This meeting is part of BRICS Science, Technology and Innovation Calendar of Activities 2020-21 adopted by all BRICS countries. 
  • It emphasized on the importance of this area in view of the emergence of new disciplines like artificial intelligence (AI), big data, machine learning, and their potential applications in the areas of medical sciences, agriculture, earth science modelling and simulation. 

Nation-wise Inputs

  • India: It shared the concept note on cooperation amongst the BRICS startups in deep technology in areas of healthcare, agriculture, and education. C-DAC presented India’s initiative of Indigenous development of supercomputers under the National Supercomputing Mission and their applications in drug design to develop and deploy a user-friendly and comprehensive early warning system for flood prediction.
  • China: It proposed AI+ HPC+ 5G-based digital twin platforms and an open-source ecosystem for smart manufacturing, precision farming, and precision medicine. 
  • Brazil and South Africa: They proposed the flagship project on Digital Earth.

Conclusion

  • The BRICS HPC & ICT Working Group provides a platform for researchers from BRICS member countries to discuss and deliberate on mutual interest areas to forge partnerships. 
  • It focused on developing deep technology-based solutions for societal challenges such as affordable healthcare, sustainable agriculture, extreme weather events, and weather, and climate modeling etc.

High-performance computing (HPC) 

  • It refers to the practice of aggregating computing power in a way that delivers much higher performance than one could get out of a typical desktop computer or workstation in order to solve large problems in science, engineering or business.
  • It has the ability to process data and perform complex calculations at high speeds. For example, a laptop or desktop with a 3 GHz processor can perform around 3 billion calculations per second while HPC can perform quadrillions of calculations per second. 
  • The HPC is a synonym for supercomputing, and some supercomputers work at more than a Petaflop or 1015 floating-point operations per second. 
  • HPC solutions have three main components:
    • Compute servers: to build a high-performance computing architecture,
    • Storage:  to feed and ingest data to and from the computer servers as quickly as it is processed.
    • Network: to support the high-speed transportation of data.

 

 

(Image Courtesy: ichec.ie/ )

Significance of HPC

  • Promotes advancement: It is through data that groundbreaking scientific discoveries are made, game-changing innovations are fueled, and quality of life is improved for billions of people around the globe. HPC is the foundation for scientific, industrial, and societal advancements.
  • Process Massive Data: Nowadays organizations need lightning-fast, highly reliable IT infrastructure to process, store, and analyze massive amounts of data. The HPC has the ability to process data in real time.
  • Supports technologies: HPC is essential to strengthen technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), AI, 3-D imaging etc.

Applications

  • Research labs: HPC is used to help scientists find sources of renewable energy, understand the evolution of our universe, predict and track storms, and create new materials.
  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning: HPC is used to detect credit card fraud, provide self-guided technical support, teach self-driving vehicles, and improve cancer screening techniques.
  • Oil and gas: HPC is used to more accurately identify where to drill for new wells and to help boost production from existing wells.
  • Financial services: HPC is used to track real-time stock trends and automate trading.
  • Health Sector: HPC is used to help develop cures for diseases like diabetes and cancer and to enable faster, more accurate patient diagnosis.
  • Media and entertainment: HPC is used to edit feature films, render mind-blowing special effects, and stream live events around the world.

(Image Courtesy: exdci.eu )

Way Forward

  • The future of high-performance computers focuses on efficiency, making more with less. The future of HPCs lies in biosciences, climate modeling, geographical data collection, and many other disciplines.
  • Research labs will be strengthened by HPCs that assist scientists in their quest to find renewable energy and analyze future and past universe evolutions.
  • HPCs can even be used in medical fields to develop cures for diseases and deliver faster and more accurate diagnoses.

BRICS

  • History
    • The leaders of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries met for the first time in St. Petersburg, Russia, on the margins of the G8 Outreach Summit in July 2006. 
    • Shortly afterwards, in September 2006, the group was formalised as BRIC during the 1st BRIC Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.
    • After a series of high level meetings, the 1st BRIC summit was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia on 16 June 2009.
    • The BRIC group was renamed as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) after South Africa was accepted as a full member at the BRIC Foreign Ministers’ meeting in New York in September 2010. 
    • Accordingly, South Africa attended the 3rd BRICS Summit in Sanya, China on 14 April 2011.
  • Key Facts
    • BRICS is bringing together the major emerging economies from the world, comprising 41% of the world population.
    • It forms 24% of the world GDP.
    • It has 16% share in world trade.
    • Total combined area of 29.3% of the total land surface of the world.
  • Three pillars of intra-BRICS cooperation
    • Political and Security: To enhance cooperation and dialogue on issues of global and regional security, developments in the global political space for peace, security and prosperity. Our priorities under this pillar are:
      • Reform of the Multilateral System
      • Counter Terrorism Cooperation
    • Economic and Financial: To promote economic growth and development for mutual prosperity through the expansion of intra-BRICS cooperation in sectors such as trade, agriculture, infrastructure, small and medium enterprises, energy and finance & banking. Recognizing the advantages of using technological and digital solutions for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals in BRICS countries with a special focus on:
  • Implementation of the BRICS Economic Partnership Strategy 2020-25.
  • Operationalization of the BRICS Agriculture Research Platform.
  • Cooperation on Disaster Resilience.
  • Innovation Cooperation.
  • Digital Health and Traditional Medicine.
  • Cultural and People to People:  To qualitatively enrich and enhance intra-BRICS people to people contacts in cultural, academic, youth, sports, business, through regular exchanges. Exchanges among Parliamentarians, young scientists etc. are also held.
  • Next Summit
    • The 13th BRICS Summit is going to be held under India’s Chairship in 2021. It will be the third time that India will be hosting the BRICS Summit after 2012 and 2016.
    • The theme for India’s Chairship is ‘BRICS @ 15: Intra-BRICS Cooperation for Continuity, Consolidation and Consensus’. 

National SuperComputer Mission (NSM) 

  • About
    • It was launched in 2015 by joint efforts of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Science and Technology.
    • Implementation is being steered by C-DAC and IISc.
    • Objectives: To create a powerful supercomputing ability in India to boost research and help academia.
      • To take India at par with global supercomputers along with getting independent in making as well as assembly of supercomputers.
  • Achievements
    • Phase 1 
      • PARAM SHIVAY: It was the first supercomputer to be assembled indigenously. It was deployed at IIT-BHU.
      • PARAM SHAKTI: It is deployed at IIT Kharagpur.
      • PARAM BRAHMA: Deployed at IISER.
      • PARAM YUKTI: deployed at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR). 
      • PARAM SANGANK: Deployed at IIT Kanpur.
    • Phase 2 
      • A new dimension of converging AI with HPC was successfully tried and tested in this phase. It will help increase the speed exponentially. 
      • PARAM SIDDHI – AI had convergent HPC and AI. It was ranked at 62 globally among 500 other supercomputers. It was created and installed by CDAC. 
      • This phase will end with the speed at 16PF.
    • Phase 3 
      • It has the mission of taking computing speed to 45PFs. 
      • Three systems of 3PFs each and 1 system of 20PFs.
      • It was launched in January 2021. 

Supercomputer

  • A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. 
  • The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS).
 
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