India will get an indigenously built supercomputer in August 2017 under the plan of the National Supercomputing Mission. Government had approved the plan in March last year. The main aim of the plan is to build 80 supercomputers in next seven year, so as to make India into an elite league of nations who have made advancements in the field.
Under the part of plan National Supercomputing Mission government has approved Rs 4,500-crore. Some of the computers developed under the plan will be imported and the rest will be build indigenously.
The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing that built India's first supercomputer, Param, is handling the project, said Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary in the Ministry of Science and Technology.
"We are working on how to control heat. The cost of power to run these supercomputers alone will be around Rs 1,000 crore," Sharma said.
These newly developed supercomputers will be kept in different institutes across the country for different purposes. "A supercomputer can be used for various purposes like climate modelling, weather forecast, discoveries of drugs among others," Sharma said.
Currently, countries like the US Japan, China and the European Union account for a major share of the top supercomputing machines in the world.