Feb 2, 1999

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a Society under Department of Electronics (DoE), Government of India announces the launch of the world's first Indian Language Free Internet based eMail facility called 'GISTMAIL'. GISTMAIL is unveiled with two other products developed by C-DAC namely, LEAP Office Ver. 2.0 - the Indian language Wordprocessor and Communication Co-Processor (CCP) Chip at the occasion of ELITEX'99 - the Electronics and Information Technology Exposition'99 organized by the Department of Electronics at Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

GISTMAIL

GISTMAIL is an Internet based Multilingual Free eMail server developed by Gist Group of C-DAC under the sponsorship of the Department of Electronics. This server facilitates any Internet user to send eMails in Indian languages from any part of the world to the other. This facility is regarded as similar to the popular Internet free eMail services such as Hotmail, Rocket Mail or MailCity etc.

One can login to the GISTMAIL at http://gistmail.cdac.in. If any computer user has Windows 95/98 or NT with Internet Explorer Ver 4.0 or later can create his/her own eMail account, and type and send messages in Indian languages. While sending and reading mail no Indian language software is required.

GISTMAIL also has the Indian language user interface which makes this software most user friendly. At present this server has the facility of sending mails in Hindi and Marathi while the work on other languages is in progress.

C-DAC's launch of this facility will further help to popularize the Indian language usage on computers and make the latest technology on the Internet available to the common man to reap the benefits of its usage. This facility is also expected to help NRIs' living abroad for communicating, with their relatives in India, in their mother-tongue.

LEAP OFFICE Ver. 2.0

C-DAC is also announcing the launch of new version of its award winning software LEAP Office. This software has been very popular in corporate sectors, government offices and other institutes where Indian language work is done seriously. With a simple user interface, the new software will further win the hearts of serious users.

LEAP Office 2.0, the independent wordprocessor is a complete solution for any Office function. The salient feature of this version is that it allows users to exchange eMail/Fax in Indian languages and has the facilities of online keyboard, Hindi synonymous dictionaries, templates for office work, Indian language spell checker and dictionary based words and phrase translation from English to Indian Languages.

LEAP Office facilitates the computer users to create documents, web pages and databases in Assamese, Bengali, Devnagari, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malyalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Oriya, Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu. Using this wordprocessor one can work with MS Word, CorelDraw, PageMaker, Spreadsheets etc. and on platforms like Windows 95/98, NT and Novell Netware.

Communication Co-Processor (CCP) Chip

CCP Chip is designed by C-DAC using 0.8 micron, 317000 Gate Array technology under the sponsorship of Microelectronics Development of the Department of Electronics, Government of India. It is a two Metal layer VLSI chip and one of the most complex VLSI Chips designed in India. This device is used in applications where high bandwidth and low latency communication is required. It autonomously handles communication protocol implemented in hardware, and thus realizes latency at less than 10 microseconds and 800 Mbits/sec bandwidth at user application level. It has successfully been used in a fast Switch PARAMNet in PARAM 10000, which is India's most powerful supercomputer developed by C-DAC.

Speaking at the occassion, Shri. R.K. Arora, Executive Director of C-DAC, said that these products can be physically seen at the C-DAC Stall at ELITEX'99. C-DAC is also demonstrating its other technologies developed for Power, Health and Education sector and applications of its PARAM 10000 supercomputer in Science and Engineering field.