India's 'Supreme' Digital Dawning
It takes a lot of work to build a supercomputer. It is seen as the pinnacle of human efforts in artificial computing for a reason. One man (Mr. Seymour Cray) started the entire supercomputer revolution but it took a 'supremely' superhuman effort to produce our first Indigenous Supercomputer. Who undertook the effort you ask? Mr. Vijay Pandurang Bhatkar, the father of modern Indian Computing.. Photo source It all started in the late 1980's. The only supercomputer available at the time was Cray-1, owned by the Americans. The Americans feared that if India got their hands on this powerful technology, it would only be a matter of time before we challenged their might in major fields of satellite communication and nuclear weapons. Hence an embargo was placed on Cray computers being sold to India. You know what they say, Necessity is the mother of Invention right? India was not deterred and under PM Rajiv Gandhi, India set up the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing