India’s Supercomputing Leap: SCI 2025 to Put the Nation on the Global HPC Map

Bengaluru 

High-Performance Computing (HPC) has emerged as the backbone of scientific discovery and technological competitiveness in the modern world. From climate modelling, drug discovery, defence and aerospace to healthcare, genomics, and artificial intelligence (AI), the ability to simulate complex systems and process massive datasets in real time is redefining national capabilities. Countries that lead in HPC today also dominate scientific research, technology exports, and digital sovereignty.

Globally, supercomputing leadership is reinforced through flagship international conferences. The Supercomputing Conference (SC) in the United States, held annually since 1988, is the world’s largest HPC gathering, supported by agencies like the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation. Europe’s International Supercomputing Conference (ISC), launched in Germany in 1986, has become a marketplace for policy, science, and industry exchange. Supercomputing Asia (SCA), started in Singapore in 2018, has rapidly united national supercomputing programs across the Asia-Pacific. Together, these platforms act as launch pads for breakthrough technologies, strategic collaborations, investments, and global visibility.

India, despite making remarkable progress in supercomputing, has so far lacked such a global stage. This gap will now be addressed with the launch of Supercomputing India 2025 (SCI2025), the country’s first flagship international conference dedicated to HPC, AI, Quantum Computing, Semiconductor Technologies and Cybersecurity.

The foundation for the HPC milestone was laid in 2015 with the launch of the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) by the Government of India, jointly steered by the Ministry of Electronics & IT, Govt. of India and the Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of India and implemented by C-DAC and IISc. NSM has transformed India’s HPC ecosystem across four verticals Infrastructure, R&D, Applications, and Human Resource Development.

As of September 2025, 37 Supercomputers with a combined capacity of 39 petaflops have been deployed across IITs, IISc, IISERs, and major R&D institutions, supporting over 10,000 researchers nationwide. A major milestone came in September 2024 when the Prime Minister dedicated three PARAM RUDRA Supercomputers, with a combined capacity of 5 petaflops, at Pune, Delhi, and Kolkata. India is now firmly on the roadmap towards Exascale supercomputing, an elite global club.

Equally significant is India’s push for indigenous development under Atmanirbhar Bharat. NSM has delivered home-grown Rudra HPC servers, Trinetra high-speed interconnects, and liquid cooling technologies, with manufacturing by Indian firms in Haryana and Karnataka. The software ecosystem includes CAPC for automatic parallelization, PINAAKA for end-to-end HPC system management, and the PARAS ecosystem for unified HPC-AI workloads across architectures.

These systems now power cutting-edge research in drug discovery, disaster management, climate science, aerospace, materials engineering, energy, astrophysics, and agriculture. Researchers from Tier II and Tier III cities have gained access to national supercomputing resources. To date, Indian scientists have executed over 100 lakh computational jobs and published more than 1,250 high-impact research papers.

Human capital remains the mission’s strongest pillar. More than 30,000 professionals and students have been trained in HPC and AI, including over 1,500 PhD scholars from 200+ institutions. Through the Centre for HPC Up-skilling and Knowledge-sharing (C-HUK), by C-DAC Bangalore, India has even contributed training content to global platforms such as IEEE.

SCI2025 will serve as India’s global window into its indigenous supercomputing ecosystem. The conference will feature major technology launches, global collaborations, a dedicated Tech Expo, and strategic dialogues across government, industry, and academia. The event is expected to catalyse industrial investment, policy momentum, and job creation in next-generation digital technologies.

The presence of global leaders, technology experts, researchers, industry professionals, academia etc. would further elevate the conference as a national milestone. Such participation would reaffirm India’s resolve to lead in frontier technologies, inspire the global scientific community, and reinforce the national vision of Digital India, Make in India – Made for the world, and Atmanirbhar Bharat. SCI2025 is more than a conference, it is a declaration of India’s arrival as a serious global force in supercomputing. By uniting indigenous innovation with global partnerships, the event is set to redefine India’s role in the future of HPC, AI, and Quantum technologies.