The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing's (C-DAC) business division has posted a turnover of Rs 15 crore in its first year of operations. C-DAC, which yesterday celebrated a decade since its foundation, is best known for breaking the monopoly of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Coordination Committee (Cocom) countries on supercomputer production in 1991.
The business division has now set an ambitious target of achieving a turnover of Rs 1,500 crore over the next couple of years. Most of the Rs 15 crore notched up by the division in 1996-97 came from the sale of software. C-DAC's prominent multinational clients include Japan's Hitachi, the US-based Sun, Inmos of the UK, and KLD of Germany.
The centre also earned a substantial amount from the development of Indian language technology, including sale of computers that can translate Indian languages into English. The centre is now trying to digitalise the technology of recording to meet the needs of the film industry and Doordarshan by using the Param (parallel processing) computers.
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C-DAC executive director Vijay Bhatkar said the centre plans to complete development of the Param OpenFrame, which will replace India's first supercomputer, the Param 8000, in October 1998. The OpenFrame will be 1,000 times more powerful than the Param 8000, he claimed, adding that its development would bring India on par with the Cocom nations, which currently dominate the top end of supercomputers.
Later, speaking at the centre's 10th foundation day ceremony in the city, Bhatkar elaborated on the major projects it has embarked on. With the help of Param, we have acquired the capability of weather forecasting, which was earlier the domain of the US, Japan and European countries, said Bhatkar.
In the late 1980's, the US and Cocom countries had refused to sell India Cray machines for weather forecasting, fearing that they would be used for defence purposes. This compelled India to go in for its own programme and marked the birth of C-DAC.
The centre is working on a wide variety of civilian and military projects, ranging from the Human Genome project for application of supercomputing in bio-technology to development of an all-weather imaging capability for day and night operations, penetration through vegetation and soil seismic data processing (SDP). The SDP technology will also have wide application in the exploration of oil and natural gas.
Wargaming is another area where India's defence forces will benefit from the simulation technology which the centre is currently developing. The Indian Navy is already using the computer simulation technology.