Guwahati, Sept. 19: PARAM-ISHAN, the super computer launched at IIT Guwahati today, is no less than the computing version of Superman.

With an ability to solve 250 trillion maths problems in a second, the super computer was launched by Union human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar.

The unit was built at the institute by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune.

"It's a great moment for the people of Assam as it now has the fastest and most powerful computer in the eastern and southern regions," Javadekar said in his address after the launch here this afternoon.

Gautam Biswas, the director of IIT Guwahati, told The Telegraph that the facility cost the institute nearly Rs 10 crore.

"It will not only augment research initiatives in the institute but also help create an ecosystem for attracting talent in research," said Biswas.

PARAM-ISHAN can be used in computational biology, chemistry, structural building, material structure, nano-block self- assemble and optimisation.

The facility has a 300 terabyte (1 terabyte equals 1,000 gigabyte) storage unit, which has a magnitude of 250 teraflops.

It consists of 162 computing nodes, including 130 central processing unit nodes, 16 graphic processing unit nodes of NVIDIA K40 and 19 instruction nodes or phi nodes of Intel Xeon, at the Computer and Communication Centre (CCC) of the institute.

"The Northeast receives heavy rainfall during the monsoon, which leads to flooding and landslides. PARAM-ISHAN can be used for weather, climate modelling and seismic data processing," said S.V. Rao, the head of CCC.

"India needs such research facilities in every institute so that no student needs to go abroad for education and research purposes," Javadekar said.

The Union minister also took the opportunity to inform the students of the IIT Guwahati about two research scholarships launched by the government. "The central government, for the first time, has asked all the institutes in the country to give innovative ideas, and following our proposals, we received 2,000 ideas. We scanned and selected 400 such ideas to be funded by the government. The funding starts from Rs 20 lakh and rises up to Rs 20 crore for big ideas. A total of Rs 1,200 crore has been sanctioned for the project," Javadekar said.

"From next year, under the Prime Minister's scholarship for the best of the best researchers, Rs 60,000 per month will be provided," he added.