India’s ambitious National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) has taken a significant leap forward with the successful deployment of 37 supercomputers across premier institutions, collectively offering a computing capacity of 40 petaflops. The information was shared in the Lok Sabha by Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Jitin Prasada, who noted that the mission has now entered a phase of rapid expansion and technological maturity.
The NSM was launched in 2015 with an outlay of Rs 4,500 crore and is jointly implemented by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST), with C-DAC Pune and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, as executing agencies. Its core objective is to reduce India’s dependence on foreign supercomputers by building a fully indigenous ecosystem for high-performance computing (HPC) research, development, deployment and advanced scientific applications.
Of the 37 supercomputers deployed so far, 34 have been installed in just the past five years, signalling accelerated progress despite global supply chain disruptions during the pandemic. These systems have been strategically placed across IITs, IISERs, NITs, C-DAC centres, universities and specialised scientific laboratories to ensure decentralised access to HPC infrastructure. In addition to the operational systems, six more supercomputers worth a combined outlay of Rs 680 crore are currently being installed across IISc, various IITs, C-DAC facilities, R&D labs and universities in Tier-II and Tier-III cities. Officials say that this wider institutional spread is designed to democratise access to supercomputing resources and foster high-end research capabilities beyond the major metropolitan centres.
A major milestone under the mission is the deployment of the PARAM Rudra series, India’s first indigenously built family of supercomputers. These systems are powered by Rudra servers designed and manufactured entirely in India, featuring a domestic hardware platform and a complete HPC software stack developed by Indian engineers. PARAM Rudra systems are now supporting sophisticated computational work in fields such as astrophysics, cosmology, fluid dynamics, earth sciences and computational chemistry.
According to officials, PARAM Rudra represents a key breakthrough in India’s journey toward self-reliance in supercomputing technology, significantly cutting down reliance on imported components and foreign architectures.
The operational supercomputers under the NSM are functioning at exceptionally high efficiency levels, with most systems registering utilisation rates above 81 percent and several exceeding 95 percent. This reflects both the strong demand for computational resources and the successful integration of these systems into various ongoing research projects.
More than 13,000 researchers have already used NSM facilities, including over 1,700 PhD scholars from 260 institutions. Together, they have executed over one crore computing jobs on NSM systems, contributing to more than 1,500 peer-reviewed research publications across scientific disciplines. Startups and MSMEs working in data-intensive domains such as artificial intelligence, materials engineering, drug design, fintech and advanced simulations are also increasingly leveraging these systems to support innovation and product development.
The NSM has significantly expanded India’s computational capacity in critical sectors. Supercomputing resources have supported advancements in drug discovery, genomics, climate modelling, weather forecasting, flood prediction, disaster management, materials research, energy systems, astronomy, seismic data processing, geological analysis, aerospace engineering and computational fluid dynamics.
The mission’s collaborations with agencies such as the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Central Water Commission (CWC), Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and the Ministry of Ayush have enabled the development of numerous specialised HPC applications tailored to address India’s scientific and developmental challenges.
Parallel to building capacity, the mission has driven breakthroughs in India’s domestic HPC manufacturing ecosystem. It has enabled the development of the indigenous Rudra Server Board, with technology transferred to three electronics manufacturing service partners for large-scale production. High-speed interconnect technologies have been successfully tested at 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps, while indigenous cooling technologies are being prepared for deployment.
A fully home-grown HPC system software stack has been integrated into NSM installations, strengthening India’s technological autonomy. The mission has also introduced PARAM Shavak, a compact “supercomputer-in-a-box” designed to help educational institutions run HPC workloads without requiring large data centre infrastructure. Work is ongoing to develop indigenous HPC processors, accelerators and advanced storage systems, an effort that could transform India from a consumer to a global supplier of advanced computational technologies.
According to the Ministry of Electronics & IT, the mission reflects Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of achieving technological self-sufficiency by creating both capability and manufacturing capacity within the country. With supercomputers now installed across more than 15 states, including IITs, IISERs, C-DAC centres and research universities, the NSM has emerged as one of the most transformative scientific infrastructure initiatives in India’s recent history.
With a total deployed computing capacity of 40 petaflops and much more in the pipeline, the mission marks a defining step in India’s journey towards global competitiveness in supercomputing and high-performance research.
