A new supercomputing facility has opened at India’s National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI) in Chandigarh.
Dr. Jitendra Singh, Minister of Health & Family Welfare, Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, last week inaugurated the advanced 650 teraflops supercomputing facility.
“This will cater to the needs of inter-disciplinary cutting-edge research being carried out in the institute related to agriculture and nutritional biotechnology. It will also be available for scientists of NABI and Centre of Innovation and Applied Bioprocessing and will be open to collaborative work for the scientists and faculties working in neighboring institutes and universities,” Singh said.
NABI didn’t share hardware specifications, but said the new system comprised one Master Node, 28 Compute Nodes, one Fat Node, two GPU Nodes, and a single Storage Node. The facility will be used in the analysis of large scale genomics, functional genomics and structural genomics data. Part of India’s National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) the Rs. 20 crore ($2.7m) facility was funded by Department of Science & Technology.
Prof. Ashwani Pareek, Executive Director, NABI and Chief Executive Officer of the Center of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing (CIAB) said the Institute’s compute capabilities will be available for the scientists of NABI and CIAB as well as neighboring institutes/universities and for the few projects sanctioned under the NSM.
“This high-end facility will be a boon for the analysis of big data accruing from the large-scale genomics, functional genomics, structural genomics, and population studies being carried out at various Institutes and universities of national and international repute,” he said.
Established in 2010, NABI aims to provide sustainable and novel solutions towards quality food and nutrition in India through agri-food biotechnology research.
