National Supercomputing Mission

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the National Supercomputing Mission in March 2015 at an estimated ₹4,500 crore over seven years, envisaging a grid of more than 70 high-performance computing facilities. The network planned in 2015 totalled 15–20 petaflops; it was later revised to 45 petaflops within the same cost. The first indigenously built system, PARAM Shivay, was inaugurated at IIT (BHU), Varanasi on 19 February 2019, followed by systems at IIT Kharagpur and IISER Pune. In 2022, IISc Bengaluru installed the 3.3-petaflop PARAM Pravega, the largest supercomputer installed in an Indian academic institution at the time.

On 26 September 2024, the Prime Minister dedicated three PARAM Rudra supercomputers worth around ₹130 crore to the nation: 3 petaflops at the Inter-University Accelerator Centre, Delhi, 1 petaflop at the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, Pune, and 838 teraflops at the S. N. Bose National Centre, Kolkata. They are built on indigenously designed and manufactured Rudra servers with an indigenous software stack. The same day he inaugurated Arka and Arunika, a ₹850 crore weather and climate computing system of the Ministry of Earth Sciences at IITM Pune and NCMRWF Noida. Arka and Arunika do not appear in the NSM list of deployed supercomputers given to Parliament in December 2025.

The Mission installs supercomputers of various capacities in academic institutions and R&D labs, and researchers reach them over the National Knowledge Network. It was built in three phases: first, six supercomputers with a significant portion of components assembled in India; then indigenous manufacturing with a local software stack, raising Indian value addition to 40%; and finally full indigenisation of design and manufacturing. Under its build approach, C-DAC developed the Rudra server and the Trinetra high-speed interconnect, and transferred the Rudra technology to three Indian electronics manufacturing partners. Training centres at Pune, Kharagpur, Chennai, Palakkad and Goa run courses in high-performance computing.

In December 2025 the Government told Parliament that 10 more supercomputers were being commissioned, including a National Facility with a capacity of 20 petaflops, and that a roadmap for NSM 2.0 was being developed. Under NSM 2.0, developing India's own processor with industry partners is being contemplated, and design and development of HPC processors, accelerators and storage has been initiated. Most systems were running at over 81% capacity and a few above 95%. As of April 2025, ₹1,874 crore had been allocated or utilised under the Mission.

₹4,500 crore Mission cost approved (March 2015). 38 supercomputers with 47 petaflops (June 2026), up from 34 with 35 petaflops (March 2025). 13,000+ researchers and 1,700+ PhD scholars supported, 1 crore+ compute jobs and 1,500+ research papers (December 2025). 6,000 Rudra servers deployed (December 2025). 75th in TOP500 for AIRAWAT (ISC 2023). Sources: PIB (DST, MeitY and Ministry of Earth Sciences releases and Parliament replies, 2015–2026); DST; C-DAC.