Earth Sciences Minister Rijiju Slams Atos Over Supercomputer Delivery Delays for Weather Forecasting

Minister Expresses Displeasure Over Delayed Supercomputer Delivery by French IT Firm

Earth Sciences Minister Kiren Rijiju has voiced his frustration with French IT company Atos due to significant delays in the delivery of two supercomputers destined for key Indian weather forecasting institutes.

Reportedly, the Earth Sciences Ministry placed an order worth $100 million with Eviden, a subsidiary of the Atos Group, last year. The aim was to bolster the computing capabilities of the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM).

"I am more upset because the target we set was December. The Union Cabinet had already approved purchasing the supercomputer. We have only four petaflop capacity. We want to install up to 18 petaflop capacity," Rijiju stated in a video interview with PTI.

The Minister further elaborated that the French company encountered financial difficulties and requested the government to remit payment to its subsidiary.

Rijiju expressed his concern over the delays, emphasizing that the company had missed the agreed-upon timeline. "But I think we will sort it out soon," he said, assuring that the government is keen on maintaining a legally sound position.

"We are ready to release the money because we want the machine immediately. The only problem is the amount is not small. So if we pay now, if the company is bankrupt or something happens, who will bail out," the minister cautioned.

He added that the government is exploring avenues to expedite the supercomputer's delivery, while also hoping for intervention from the French government, given the strong bilateral ties.

"Since it is a high-cost equipment, we want to ensure that the transaction happens duly and properly," he affirmed.

"From outside, everything's ready. It is only the problem with the main company. They want us to pay their subsidiary. We will pay only to a company whom we have entered an MoU with," Rijiju clarified.

The supercomputing system, based on Eviden's BullSequana XH2000, boasts a combined power capacity of up to 21.3 petaflops.

The supercomputer intended for IITM in Pune is expected to provide 13 petaflops of computing power for atmospheric and climate research. According to the PTI report, the system will integrate 3,000 CPU nodes utilizing AMD EPYC 7643 processors and 26 GPU nodes through NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs. The system will leverage the NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand networking platform with In-Network Computing, 3PB all flash and 29PB disk-based DDN EXAScaler ES400NVX2 storage and Micron high-technology memory.

Currently, the existing computing capacity at NCMRWF stands at 2.8 petaflops, while IITM has 4 petaflops.