Computing in India: From TIFRAC to PARAM Supercomputers

The correct answer is B, TIFRAC. The TIFR Automatic Calculator was completed at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai in 1960 and is counted as the first digital computer designed and built in India; Jawaharlal Nehru gave it the name TIFRAC. Option A is wrong because the HEC-2M was brought from Britain and installed at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata in 1955, so it was the first computer to work in India but not one built here. Option C is wrong because PARAM 8000 of 1991 was India's first supercomputer, three decades later. Option D is wrong because the TDC-12, a Trombay Digital Computer, was made by the Electronics Corporation of India Limited after it was set up in 1967. Keep the two firsts apart: first computer in India, HEC-2M; first built in India, TIFRAC.

The correct answer is C, C-DAC. The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing was set up at Pune in 1988 with the specific task of building an indigenous supercomputer after India was refused an American Cray machine, and in 1991 its team completed PARAM 8000, a parallel computer assembled from transputer processors. Option A is wrong because the Indian Space Research Organisation built the SAGA-220 system in 2011, using graphics processors, long after PARAM. Option B is wrong because the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre developed the ANUPAM series of parallel computers, a separate line of work for atomic energy. Option D is wrong because within the Defence Research and Development Organisation it was ANURAG at Hyderabad that built PACE, the Processor for Aerodynamic Computation and Evaluation. C-DAC also built AIRAWAT at Pune for artificial intelligence work, which is its newest well known system.

The correct answer is D, Vijay Bhatkar. Vijay Bhatkar led the team at C-DAC that built PARAM 8000 in 1991 and is therefore described as the architect of India's PARAM series of supercomputers. Option A is wrong because Homi Jehangir Bhabha was the founder of the Indian atomic energy programme and of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, where TIFRAC was built, but he died in 1966, long before the PARAM project. Option B is wrong because Satish Dhawan was a leader of the Indian space programme and chairman of ISRO, remembered in the name of the launch centre at Sriharikota. Option C is wrong because Raj Reddy is an Indian-born computer scientist who worked on artificial intelligence and speech recognition in the United States and was not part of the PARAM project.

The correct answer is B, 1988. C-DAC was established at Pune in 1988 under the Department of Electronics, with a mission to design and build an indigenous supercomputer after the United States declined to supply a Cray machine to India. Option A is wrong because 1976 is the year the National Informatics Centre was set up to build computing for government. Option C is wrong because 1991 is the year the first product of that mission, PARAM 8000, was completed, a common confusion in this question; 1991 is also the year of the Software Technology Parks of India scheme. Option D is wrong because 1998 belongs to other events in Indian science and has no bearing here. The pair to memorise is C-DAC in 1988 and PARAM 8000 in 1991, three years later.

The correct answer is A, the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. The HEC-2M, brought from Britain, was installed at the Indian Statistical Institute in 1955 and is counted as the first computer to work in India; the institute later added a Soviet URAL machine and in 1966 built the ISIJU with Jadavpur University. Option B is wrong because the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research built TIFRAC, completed in 1960, which is the first computer designed and built in India but not the first installed here. Option C is wrong because the Indian Institute of Science, although a major computing centre today and an implementing agency of the National Supercomputing Mission, did not host the first machine. Option D is wrong because the Trombay work came later, through ECIL and the TDC series. The Soviet URAL machine that followed at the same institute is sometimes offered as a distractor here.

The correct answer is C, the Department of Atomic Energy. ECIL was set up at Hyderabad in 1967 under the Department of Atomic Energy to make electronic equipment for the atomic energy programme, and it produced the TDC series, the Trombay Digital Computers, for laboratory and industrial use. Option A is wrong because the Department of Electronics itself was created only in 1970, three years after ECIL, and it later sponsored C-DAC and ERNET. Option B is wrong because the Ministry of Railways was a large user of computers, installing IBM machines for reservation and accounting work, but it did not set up ECIL. Option D is wrong because the defence line of computing ran through the Defence Research and Development Organisation, whose ANURAG laboratory built the PACE processor. ECIL also made the TDC-316, a later and more capable machine of the same family.

The correct answer is A. The Education and Research Network, ERNET, was begun in 1986 by the Department of Electronics with support from the United Nations Development Programme to link universities, the Indian Institutes of Technology and research laboratories, and it carried the first academic internet traffic in India. Option B is wrong because railway reservation was computerised separately from 1986 onwards through the Centre for Railway Information Systems. Option C is wrong because the linking of district offices with state capitals and the centre was the work of NICNET, the satellite network of the National Informatics Centre. Option D is wrong because chip making belongs to the Semiconductor Complex at Mohali, set up in the 1970s, and not to a network project at all. NICNET, the satellite network of the National Informatics Centre, is the usual distractor paired with ERNET.

The correct answer is B, IIT (BHU), Varanasi. PARAM Shivay, commissioned in 2019 at the Indian Institute of Technology at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, was the first supercomputer installed under the National Supercomputing Mission, which was approved in 2015. Option A is wrong because IIT Kharagpur received PARAM Shakti, which followed Shivay. Option C is wrong because IISER Pune received PARAM Brahma. Option D is wrong because IIT Kanpur received PARAM Sanganak. Other systems of the mission include PARAM Yukti at JNCASR Bengaluru, PARAM Ganga at IIT Roorkee, PARAM Ananta at IIT Gandhinagar, PARAM Himalaya at IIT Mandi and PARAM Porul at NIT Tiruchirappalli, so the question is usually set on the first one or on a specific institution's machine. The mission also aims to raise the share of components designed and assembled within India at each stage.

The correct answer is C, C-DAC and IISc Bengaluru. The National Supercomputing Mission, approved in 2015, is steered jointly by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Science and Technology, and it is implemented by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing at Pune together with the Indian Institute of Science at Bengaluru. Option A is wrong because ISRO and DRDO build computers for their own space and defence needs, such as SAGA-220 and PACE. Option B is wrong because BARC's ANUPAM series serves atomic energy and the National Informatics Centre runs government networks. Option D is wrong because NIC and ERNET India are network and e-governance bodies, not builders of supercomputers. The mission's aims are to install systems, to make the hardware in India and to train users.

The correct answer is B, weather and climate modelling. Pratyush was installed at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune in 2018, with a companion system, Mihir, at the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting, and the pair was acquired to run high-resolution models for monsoon forecasting, cyclone tracks and climate studies. Option A is wrong because nuclear simulation is done on the ANUPAM systems of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Option C is wrong because satellite image processing is handled by ISRO's own computing facilities, including SAGA-220. Option D is wrong because genome work uses institutional clusters and the systems of the National Supercomputing Mission rather than a dedicated weather machine. Remember the pairing: Pratyush at Pune and Mihir at Noida, both for weather. Mihir takes its name from a word for the sun, and Pratyush from a word for the first light of day.

The correct answer is A, floating point operations per second. A supercomputer's performance is stated in FLOPS, the number of floating point calculations it completes in a second, which is why the figures appear as teraflops, petaflops and exaflops; a petaflop is a thousand trillion such operations a second. Option B is wrong because bits per second measures the rate at which data moves over a communication link, not computing speed. Option C is wrong because hertz measures the clock frequency of a single processor, and a supercomputer's strength comes from thousands of processors working in parallel rather than from a high clock speed. Option D is wrong because bytes per instruction is not a performance measure at all. The work that needs such speed includes weather forecasting, drug design and the training of large artificial intelligence models.

The correct answer is D. SAGA-220 was built by the Indian Space Research Organisation in 2011 using graphics processing units, so that pair is correct. Option A is wrong because Flosolver was built at the National Aerospace Laboratories in Bengaluru in 1986 and is counted as India's first parallel computer. Option B is wrong because the ANUPAM series of parallel computers was developed by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, so options A and B simply have their organisations exchanged. Option C is wrong because PACE, the Processor for Aerodynamic Computation and Evaluation, was built by ANURAG, a laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation at Hyderabad, not by ISRO. The fourth line of this work is C-DAC's PARAM series, which began with PARAM 8000 in 1991. Param Padma of 2002 was the system that first took an Indian machine into the world list of fastest computers.