PARAM

PARAM is a series of supercomputers designed and assembled by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in Pune, India. The latest machine in the series is the PARAM ISHAN.

Param means supreme in Sanskrit.

After being denied Cray supercomputers as a result of a technology embargo, India started a program to develop indigenous supercomputers and supercomputing technologies. Supercomputers were considered a double edged weapon capable of assisting in the development of nuclear weapons. For the purpose of achieving self-sufficiency in the field, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) was set up in 1988 by the then Department of Electronics with Dr. Vijay Bhatkar as its Director. The project was given an initial run of 3 years and an initial funding of ₹ 300,000,000, the same amount of money and time that was usually expended to purchase a supercomputer from the US. In 1990, a prototype was produced and was benchmarked at the 1990 Zurich Supercomputering Show. It surpassed most other systems, placing India second after US.

The final result of the effort was the PARAM 8000, which was installed in 1991.

Unveiled in 1991, PARAM 8000 used Inmos T800 transputers. Transputers were a fairly new and innovative microprocessor architecture designed for parallel processing at the time. It was a distributed memory MIMD architecture with a reconfigurable interconnection network. It had 64 CPUs. Exported to Germany, UK and Russia.

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