AKIPRESS.COM - India’s new indigenously-built supercomputer, first of the 80 planned ones, will be ready by August 2017. In March last year, the government had approved the National Supercomputing Mission, with the aim to build about 80 new supercomputers in the next seven years at an estimated cost of Rs. 4,500 crore, reports Better India.

These supercomputers will form a grid of high-performance computing facilities.

According a report in Live Mint, they will be used by National Knowledge Network, a government program that connects academic institutions and research labs over a high-speed network. Some of these computers will be made in India and some will be imported. The plan is being carried forward by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY).

The first supercomputer of the lot is under development at Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), which built India’s first supercomputer, Param.

“We are working on how to control heat. The cost of power to run these supercomputers alone will be around Rs 1,000 crore,” Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary in the Ministry of Science and Technology told PTI.