Bhubaneswar, Feb. 21: The Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) plans to collaborate with the Pune-based Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) to work on various key areas of high performance computing, the use of supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computing problems.

The university is working on setting up five advanced centres of computing in various institutions in the state and intends to set up a high performance computing cluster in their upcoming campus in Rourkela.

“This would help students of MTech to pursue research,” said a senior official of BPUT on the sidelines of the National Symposium on High Performance Computing in Academia and Beyond, organised by C-DAC, department of IT, ministry of communications and IT, in association with BPUT. The programme primarily aimed at creating awareness on high performance computing and its benefits in the academic segment.

“The symposium will enable BPUT to introduce similar programmes in their curriculum and enable faculty and students in various scientific and all engineering disciplines of Odisha to exploit the benefits of advanced computing and parallel processing,” said Pradeep K. Sinha, senior director high performance computing, C-DAC.

“C-DAC should take the initiative to set up high performance computing labs in all the universities and institutions of the state for the benefit of the scientific and engineering community,” said minister of higher education Badri Narayan Patra, who inaugurated the programme.

Patra also said that these centres would act as computing research centres for scientific and academic purposes and address the need of high quality engineering education and high-end computing work for the research community in the eastern region.

A faculty development programme on “Current Trends in Distributed Operating Systems” was also organised for the faculty members of engineering, MTech, MCA and mathematics stream of all colleges under the university on the occasion. The Medical Informatics Group of C-DAC is already working for the Odisha Telemedicine Network in the state.