French Supercomputer Delay Angers Earth Sciences Minister, Threatens Weather Forecasting Upgrades

Kiren Rijiju, the Minister of Earth Sciences, has voiced his concerns regarding delays in the delivery of two supercomputers by the French IT company Atos. These supercomputers are intended for use by Indian weather forecasting institutes.

PTI photo

Reportedly, the Earth Sciences Ministry placed an order worth $100 million with Eviden, a subsidiary of the Atos Group, last year. The aim was to bolster the computing capabilities of the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM).

"I am more upset because the target we set was December," Rijiju stated in a video interview with PTI. "The Union Cabinet had already approved purchasing the supercomputer. We have only four petaflop capacity. We want to install up to 18 petaflop capacity."

The minister further explained that the French company encountered financial difficulties and requested the government to make payments to its subsidiary.

Delay Causing "Worry"

Rijiju emphasized that the delay is a source of "worry" as the company has exceeded the agreed-upon timeline. He added, "But I think we will sort it out soon," while affirming the government's commitment to upholding its legal position.

"We are ready to release the money because we want the machine immediately. The only problem is the amount is not small. So if we pay now, if the company is bankrupt or something happens, who will bail out?" he questioned.

Rijiju also mentioned that the government is exploring measures to expedite the supercomputer's delivery but refrained from providing specific details. He expressed hope that the French government would intervene, given the strong relationship between the two countries.

"Since it is a high-cost equipment, we want to ensure that the transaction happens duly and properly," he said.

"From outside, everything's ready. It is only the problem with the main company. They want us to pay their subsidiary. We will pay only to a company whom we have entered an MoU with," Rijiju clarified.

The supercomputing system, based on Eviden's BullSequana XH2000, is expected to deliver a combined power capacity of up to 21.3 petaflops.

Supercomputer at IITM

The supercomputer destined for IITM in Pune will provide 13 petaflops of computing power for research in atmosphere and climate. The PTI report indicates that it will incorporate 3,000 CPU nodes using AMD EPYC 7643 processors and 26 GPU nodes through NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs. The system will leverage the NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand networking platform with In-Network Computing, 3PB all flash and 29PB disk-based DDN EXAScaler ES400NVX2 storage, and Micron high-technology memory.

Currently, the computing facilities at NCMRWF and IITM have capacities of 2.8 petaflops and 4 petaflops, respectively.