Why in News?
Eighteen new petaFLOP supercomputers dedicated to weather forecasting are set to be introduced in India, aiming to enhance the accuracy and resolution of weather predictions.
These state-of-the-art machines will significantly improve
forecasting capabilities at the block level, predict cyclones with greater accuracy and lead time, and provide detailed ocean state forecasts.
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What are FLOPs in computing?
FLOPs, or Floating-Point Operations per Second, is a metric used to measure computational performance and efficiency in high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI).
Floating-point operations involve mathematical calculations with real numbers that have fractional parts.
With floating-point encoding, extremely long numbers can be handled relatively easily.
Significance:
FLOPs are not the sole metric to evaluate a computer’s performance. Factors like memory bandwidth, latency, and architectural features also contribute. However, FLOPs provide a baseline for comparing computational capabilities, particularly in tasks dominated by floating-point calculations.
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Unit of Computing Speed:
Teraflops:
It is a unit of computing speed equal to one million million (1 trillion) (10^12) FLOPS.
Petaflops:
It is a unit of computing speed equal to 1000 TFLOPS (10^15).
Exaflops:
It is a unit of computing speed equal to one billion billion (10^18) FLOPS.
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India’s Current Usage of petaFLOPs:
The National Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) houses ‘Mihir,’ a 2.8 petaFLOP supercomputer, while the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) houses ‘Pratyush,’ a 4.0 petaFLOP supercomputer.
Once the new petaFLOP supercomputers are introduced, the existing supercomputers, launched in 2018, will be decommissioned.
As per the agreement, eight PFLOPs of computing power will be received by NCMRWF, while the remaining ten PFLOPs will be allocated to IITM, catering to their specific weather forecasting requirements.
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