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Dated May 12, 2000
Maharashtra Herald, Pune
Science and technology
once again drew thousands of viewers to the Pune University
Science & Technology Park on the occasion of National
Technology Day which fell on Thursday.
It was here that the C-DAC Centre for Computers threw open their doors to the public
for the first time in years, to showcase the work of
the C-DAC scientists on the PARAM range of Supercomputers.
Computer enthusiast
and C-DAC staffer Devi Prasad, explained the technology
that went into the PARAM range. Continuous batches of
students, housewives and youth from all walks of life
thronged throughout the afternoon to view the PARAM
8000, PARAM 9000 and PARAM
10000 Supercomputers. The Computers were housed
in the high security centrally air-conditioned Science
and Technology Park.
Devi Prasad described
'The Pride of Maharashtra' and explained that the network
of a series of CPUs were imported, having been bought
off-the-shelf and then assembled in C-DAC which developed
the software. In 1991 PARAM 8000 - capable of making
1 billion calculations per second - was designed. This
was followed in 1996 by PARAM 9000 which is capable
of 2 billion calculations per second, and finally PARAM
10000 - capable of 100 billion calculations per second.
The PARAM 10000 consists
of 48 CPUs and works round-the-clock.
Housed in a huge high-protection
cell, the Supercomputer processes unlimited loads of
data for Government agencies, Educational Institutes,
Industry, Scientific Laboratories and Research & Development
wings of various government and private organisations.
"More than Rs. 100
crores were invested in the making of the PARAM range,"
explained System Administrators B. Saravanan and V.
Bawane who demonstrated the capabilities of the PARAM
range. "This next generation System Software developed
by C-DAC can be used by Scientists, Engineers, and Meteorologists
to monitor weather and earthquakes. It is also used
for communications, study of molecular data used in
the electronic field, and is also applicable by Social
Scientists who fix citizen's databases. There were forty
different systems available."
The other computers
on display showed Software that designed Subtitles for the film industry and 'iLeap'
a Wordprocessor in 40 different languages.
Though there were never
ending queues to see the displays, all the visitors
were treated to sweets and biscuits by the Centre.
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