IIT Delhi has invited proposals from the government and private academic institutions as well as private companies in association with an academic partner from all over the country to use its supercomputer resource PADUM for COVID-19 research.

 

In this, allocation of supercomputer resource to merit based proposals will be made for three months and a total of Rs 1 Cr worth of computational time will be provided to them for free. Each proposal will have a maximum cap of Rs 10 lakh worth of computational resource.

 

The allocation period can be extended to six months after evaluating the performance of the projects.

 

Speaking about this initiative by the institute, Prof V Ramgopal Rao, Director, IIT Delhi said: “In these difficult times, sharing of resources is important in order to address the infrastructure requirements of researchers working on the Corona epidemic. IIT Delhi has taken a principled stand and wishes to set an example for this. It is important for scientists to collaborate with each other given the urgency of the situation.”

 

The researchers have been asked to submit their proposals by April 15. After the submission of proposals, experts from the IIT-Delhi will evaluate them on the first come first serve basis.

 

After selection of the proposals, IIT-Delhi will provide basic and limited support to them, which will include instructions on job submissions or smooth functioning of these projects, the statement said.

 

Along with this, all researchers from India have also been welcomed to use supercomputer at IIT Delhi for COVID-19 research on payment basis. “IIT Delhi will match to 2X the amount contributed for supercomputer (high-performance computing-HPC) usage for COVID-19 research,” the statement added.

 

In this payment basis mode, the institute is allocating a budget of Rs 5 crore worth of high-performance computational resource (supercomputer) for the next six months.