Pratyush:India’s Fastest Supercomputer for Weather and Climate Prediction

With an eye on improving weather and climate prediction in the country, India has recently upgraded its supercomputing capacity with the acquisition of a new high performance computing (HPC) system. The country’s fastest and the first multi-petaflops supercomputer facility was inaugurated by Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for Science and Technology, Earth Sciences, and Environment, Forest and Climate Change at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune on 8 January 2018. As the Sun is the driving force for weather and climate systems on the Earth, the supercomputer is named ‘Pratyush’ (meaning the Sun in Sanskrit).