Earth Sciences Minister Slams Atos Over Supercomputer Delays Hampering Weather Forecasts

Minister Expresses Displeasure Over Delayed Supercomputer Delivery from European IT Firm

Kiren Rijiju, the Minister of Earth Sciences, has voiced his frustration with French IT company Atos over delays in the delivery of two supercomputers to key Indian weather forecasting institutes. The delay is impacting the enhancement of the nation's weather prediction capabilities.

Earth Sciences Minister Kiren Rijiju.

The Earth Sciences Ministry placed an order worth $100 million with Eviden, a subsidiary of the Atos Group, last year. The supercomputers were intended to significantly boost the computing resources of the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM).

Rijiju expressed his concerns in a video interview with PTI, stating, "I am more upset because the target we set was December... We have only four petaflop capacity. We want to install up to 18 petaflop capacity."

According to Rijiju, the French company encountered financial difficulties, leading to a request for the Indian government to make payments to its subsidiary.

The minister emphasized the urgency of the situation. "But I think we will sort it out soon," he stated, while also stressing the government's commitment to ensuring all legal aspects are meticulously addressed.

Rijiju elaborated on the government's position: "We are ready to release the money because we want the machine immediately. The only problem is the amount is not small. So if we pay now, if the company is bankrupt or something happens, who will bail out?"

He also mentioned that the government is actively seeking solutions to expedite the delivery process. Rijiju hopes for intervention from the French government, given the strong bilateral relations between the two nations.

"Since it is a high-cost equipment, we want to ensure that the transaction happens duly and properly," he added.

The core issue, according to Rijiju, lies within the French company itself. "From outside, everything's ready. It is only the problem with the main company. They want us to pay their subsidiary. We will pay only to a company whom we have entered an MoU with," he clarified.

The supercomputing system, built upon Eviden's BullSequana XH2000 architecture, is expected to deliver a combined processing power of up to 21.3 petaflops.

The supercomputer destined for IITM in Pune will contribute 13 petaflops of computing power dedicated to atmospheric and climate research. The system will feature 3,000 CPU nodes utilizing AMD EPYC 7643 processors and 26 GPU nodes powered by NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs. It will also incorporate the NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand networking platform with In-Network Computing, 3PB all flash and 29PB disk-based DDN EXAScaler ES400NVX2 storage, and Micron high-technology memory.

Currently, the computing capacity at NCMRWF stands at 2.8 petaflops, while IITM possesses 4 petaflops.