Vijay Bhatkar: The Engineer Behind India’s First Supercomputer

Vijay Pandurang Bhatkar is an Indian computer scientist. He is best known as the architect of the PARAM series of supercomputers.

1. Where was he born, and what did he study?

Bhatkar was born on 11 October 1946 at Muramba. It lies in Akola district of Maharashtra. He took a BE degree in electrical engineering at Nagpur University in 1965.

He then earned an ME from M.S. University, Baroda, in 1968. He finished a PhD in electrical engineering at IIT Delhi in 1972. IIT is short for Indian Institute of Technology.

2. What jobs did he hold before C-DAC?

Before C-DAC, Bhatkar worked in industry and for the state. He was Vice-President at Tata Consultancy Services. He also ran an electronics research centre in Trivandrum. He was Executive Director of KELTRON, a state firm.

From 1987 to 1989 he advised the Department of Electronics. In that role he led four projects backed by the UN Development Programme.

C-DAC means the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing. It was set up to answer a technology denial.

3. What happened with the Cray supercomputer?

Supercomputers help to forecast weather. They also help to design satellites and weapons. The United States feared that India would use a Cray to design missiles and warplanes. So the sale did not go through.

One account says the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore had ordered a Cray Y-MP for about half a billion rupees. Cray never received the export licence, and the order was cancelled. Other accounts name a different Cray model. So the exact machine is disputed.

4. When was C-DAC set up, and who ran it?

C-DAC was set up in March 1988 as a society of the Department of Electronics. Its mission was to build an Indian supercomputer. Bhatkar became its founding Executive Director.

The brief was hard. He had to build a machine of gigaflops class, in a country with a young computer industry. He had about three years, and the cost had to stay below the cancelled Cray deal. A gigaflop means one billion calculations each second.

5. What did the Prime Minister say to him?

One account says Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi picked Bhatkar for the job. It says Gandhi asked three questions: could India do it, how long, and at what cost. Only one source tells this story. Treat it as a retold anecdote, not a fixed fact.

The same account says Bhatkar had seen a supercomputer only in a picture. He answered that India could do it in less time than an import would take.

6. What is PARAM 8000, and how was it built?

PARAM 8000 was India’s first gigaflops-class parallel computer. A parallel computer splits one job among many processors. They all work at the same time. C-DAC finished it in July 1991.

The basic machine had 64 nodes. Each node held an Inmos transputer, a British chip. So the design was Indian, but the key chips were bought abroad. C-DAC claimed a speed of about 1 gigaflop.

7. Why do sources disagree on its speed and year?

C-DAC’s own HPC page lists PARAM 8000 as India’s first giga-scale supercomputer in 1990. Other C-DAC and press pages say 1991. The sources do not explain the gap.

Some articles say it ran at 5 gigaflops and was the world’s second fastest. Other sources give about 1 gigaflop. Do not memorise the 5 figure. Remember the 1991 completion and the gigaflops class.

C-DAC kept building faster machines. It also worked on computing in Indian languages.

8. How did the PARAM series grow?

PARAM 10000 came in 1998 at 100 gigaflops. PARAM Padma followed in 2002 at one teraflop. A teraflop is one trillion calculations each second.

PARAM Padma was India’s first supercomputer on the Top500 list. It ranked 171 in June 2003. PARAM Yuva rose to 54 teraflops in 2008. PARAM Yuva II reached 529 teraflops in 2013.

9. What did C-DAC do for Indian languages?

C-DAC began work on Indian-language computing almost at the same time as its first supercomputer. Its group was called GIST, short for Graphics and Intelligence based Script Technology. GIST made it possible to use many Indian scripts with English on ordinary computers.

An expansion board let a personal computer show most Indian scripts. C-DAC also worked on a common keyboard layout and on ISCII. ISCII is the Indian-script coding standard.

10. What is the National Supercomputing Mission?

The National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) began in 2015. It places supercomputers in colleges and labs across India. Users reach them through the National Knowledge Network.

C-DAC says that by March 2025 the mission had set up 34 supercomputers. Together they gave 35 petaflops. A petaflop is one thousand teraflops. The Baroda alumni page says Bhatkar works on exascale computing.

Bhatkar held posts in universities and science bodies. He also won many awards.

11. Which posts did he hold later?

Bhatkar chaired the Board of Governors of IIT Delhi from 2012 to 2017. In January 2017 he became Chancellor of Nalanda University. He is also National President of Vijnana Bharati. It is a science movement of scientists across India.

He founded C-DAC’s Advanced Computing Training School. He also sat on the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet.

12. Which honours did he win?

Bhatkar won the Padma Shri in 2000 and the Padma Bhushan in 2015. He also won the FICCI Award in 1983 and the Electronics Man of the Year award in 1992. IIT Delhi gave him its Distinguished Alumni Award in 1994.

He has written or edited several books. He has also written over 80 research papers. They cover supercomputing, artificial intelligence and computer control.

Questions on him test names, machines and years. Learn the pairs below.

13. Which pairs and traps should you remember?

Match Bhatkar to C-DAC and the PARAM series. C-DAC was set up in 1988. PARAM 8000 was finished in July 1991.

PARAM 8000 and PARAM Padma are different machines. PARAM Padma, in 2002, was the first to reach a teraflop. Do not give that milestone to the 1991 machine.

C-DAC did not build the Cray. The Cray sale was refused, and C-DAC built PARAM instead. Padma Shri came in 2000. Padma Bhushan came in 2015.