The story of India’s first supercomputer PARAM 8000

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“Great nations are not built on borrowed technology”. This is the statement of Vijay Bhatkar the man known as the architect of Indian IT industry and brain behind India’s first supercomputer PARAM.

It was late 80s when America snubbed Rajiv Gandhi to deny the export of supercomputer Cray. Rajiv Gandhi tried his best to convince America that India won't use this supercomputer in missile technology. But America didn't export Cray to India. IBM was ready to make supercomputer in India but Ronald Regan then American President also didn't allow this.

 Then Rajiv Gandhi planned to set up Centre for Development of Advance Computing (C-DAC) in March 1988 on the recommendation of Scientific Advisory Council to PM.

 Now to make C-DAC work, Rajiv Gandhi turned to the man named Vijay Pandurang Bhatkar who has never seen supercomputer in his life. But it seemed that he had all the plan to make one. When Rajiv Gandhi met him, he asked three questions to him.
  1. “Can we do it?” Rajiv Gandhi asked. He said “ I have not seen a supercomputer as we don't have access to supercomputer. I have only seen a picture of Cray! But Yes,we can.”
  2. “How long will it take”? Rajiv Gandhi asked. He promptly said “ Less than it will take us in trying to import Cray from US.”
  3. “How much money it would take” Rajiv Gandhi again asked. He replied “ The whole effort including building an institution, developing the technology, commissiong and installing India’s first supercomputer will still cost less than the Cray.”
Rajiv Gandhi gave his go ahead in the project. Vijay Bhatkar then summoned all renowned scientists from all over India to Pune to work on the one of India’s greatest technological project.

With in the 3 years and well yonder the deadline he did that extraordinary thing and C-DAC in 1991 rolled out India’s first supercomputer PARAM 8000


For the first time ever, a developing country has pulled out such a feat in advance computing. Whole world was stunned. Many were doubting the capabilities of PARAM. Then Vijay Bhatkar decided to take the PARAM prototype to a major international conference and exhibition on supercomputer.

PARAM 8000 was the second fastest supercomputer in that time and the price was so low that US had to slash the price of Cray.Based on PARAM, a whole new series of high computing, high performance parallel series of supercomputers were made. PARAM 10000 was built in 1998.


And based on PARAM series, Vijay Bhatkar also built the National Param Supercomputing Facility (NPSF). This has now been made available as a grid computing facility through Garuda Grid on the National Knowledge Network, providing nationwide access to high speed computing infrastructure. It was also during his tenure that C-DAC developed the graphics and intelligence based script technology (GIST) laying the foundation of the computerisation of Indian languages.

In 2015, he was awarded Padma Bhushan. In 2017, Vijay Bhatkar was appointed as the Chancellor of Nalanda University. Prior to that he has also served as the chairman of Board of Governors in IIT Delhi.


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