‘PARAM Siddhi-AI’—India’s fastest HPC-AI Supercomputer

Current Context: The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing has announced that it will be commissioning India’s largest HPC-AI Supercomputer named as ‘PARAM Siddhi –AI’. 

• The aim behind this development is to place India among top countries in world in the sector of AI supercomputing research and innovation. 
• This initiative was headed by Abhishek Das, Scientist and Program Director (HPC-AI Infrastructure Development) at C-DAC. He has led this idea and designed architecture of India’s largest HPC-AI infrastructure. 
• The ‘PARAM Siddhi –AI’ supercomputer is a machine with 210 AI Petaflops (6.5 Petaflops Peak DP). It will be based on NVIDIA GDX SuperPOD Reference Architecture which is comprised of 42 NVIDIA GDX A100 Systems, connected with NVIDIA Mellanox HDR Infiband networking with HPC-AI engine, software frameworks and cloud platform of C-DAC.
• It will be established under NSM C-DAC, NITI Aayog, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Dept. of Science and Technology and Central Government. 
• Static Part: 
• HQ of C-DAC: Pune
• DG of C-DAC: Hemant Darbari
• HQ of NVIDIA: California, United States

Question: 

Q.1 Who among the following headed the initiative of commissioning India’s largest HPC-AI Supercomputer named as ‘PARAM Siddhi –AI’?
a. Rajesh Khullar
b. Abhishek Das
c. Subhash Kamath
d. Hemant Darbari