India to build fastest supercomputer in the world

India plans to build a new supercomputer that would be 61 times faster than IBM Sequoia, currently fastest computer in the world.

According to reports, telecom and IT minister Kapil Sibal had written to prime minister Manmohan Singh on the development of "petaflop and exaflop range of supercomputer" at an estimated cost of Rs4,700 crore over a five-year period.

The report quoted a government official as saying that in his letter, that Sibal had said that C-DAC had developed a proposal with a roadmap to develop petaflop and exaflop range of supercomputers in the country with an outlay of Rs 4,700 crore.

India's attempts at making the world's cheapest tablet, have not exactly been a success due to in-fighting among the manufacturers and government agencies, but this seems to have not deterred the government from taking on bigger more challenging projects.

So how do the fastest number crunching machines stack up? The world's fastest supercomputer is the IBM Sequoia, with a peak speed of 16.32 petaflops, based in Livermore, US, and electricity consumption of 7890.0 kW. According to the Top500 list, the Sequioa is one of the most energy-efficient systems in the world.

The fastest Indian supercomputer in the 2012 list is the one at CSIR Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation in Bangalore which is ranked at 58.