You thought India is a country of cheap tablets which are never shipped? No it got one more dimension :  Building super expensive supercomputers and staying afloat in the global computing race. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has made a statement that Rs. 5000 crores ($1 bn – it actually is 940 million on current conversation, but that was too painful and hence the rounding off) will be scraped somehow to improve India’s supercomputing prowess. Guess what’s the headline of the source I got the news from :

PM suggests supercomputer worth Rs 5,000 cr to take on China (IBN Live)

That’s some sensational dope. A $1 bn for just one supercomputer?

That’s the last thing India needs – building a $1.1 supercomputer and putting A. Raja, Kanimozhi and Suresh Kalmadi in charge and getting an Aakash tablet as the end product.

Now coming back to what the PM actually said :

“To build national capacity and capability in supercomputing, the implementation will be carried out by the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, at an estimated cost of Rs 5,000 crore,” the Prime Minister said.

“Rs. 5000 crore to supercomputing and not to a supercomputer” – There’s a super difference. Funny thing is, that news tidbit was written by two people. Yeah I know. The famous “ How many people to fix a light bulb” joke comes to my mind too.

India started its supercomputer program in 1980’s and has built quite a few since then. Top 500 Supercomputer Sites a organization which tracks supercomputers across the world starting compiling its list in June, 1993. India did not make it to the list till June 2003. At its peak India had 8 supercomputers in the global 500 list.

In the latest list published in November 2011, India had just two supercomputers in the top 500 list. The individual ranking for those two has dropped significantly from June 2011’s list. Though China lost the top supercomputer (Tianhe) slot to Japan, it still had a whopping 74 supercomputers on the list. Only behind America’s 263.

That’s what is concerning Indian Prime Minister. Not just one supercomputer but a bunch of them to stay competitive. India’s recent supercomputer SAGA, which doesn’t figure in the top 500 list because of a technical reason, has costed $2.2 million (14 crore rupees) to build. India’s first publicized supercomputer Param Padma has costed $10 million to build. Tata’s EKA which is the top Supercomputer from India and is ranked at 85 in the recent top 500 list costed $30 million to build.

Going by those costs, India can build anywhere between 30 to 200 supercomputers for $ 1 bn.

So here’s my advice to the mainstream media : Read. Repeat. Read. Repeat. Write. Re-write. Read. Publish. If that’s too tough, use common sense.

PS: The only thing I hate about writing stuff like this is the dollar conversion. It’s not painful but error prone as we are referring to costs in various years.

PPS : This is the second one in a row after TOI’s Aakash story. Sensational headlines, weak stories and poor data.