C-DAC Releases New Products For Development Of The North East

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), which functions under the aegis of the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MC&IT), Government of India, has released two products for the North East (NE) region at the ongoing Indian Science Congress. Prof M G K Menon, chancellor-NEHU and a distinguished scientist, inaugurated the PARAM Sheersh Supercomputing Facility set up at NEHU and released the product Cure@Home for the people of the NE region.

S Ramakrishnan, director general, C-DAC, said, “It is a proud moment for C-DAC to deliver two products at the prestigious platform of the Indian Science Congress through the hands of Prof M G K Menon. Both the products have been developed specifically for the NE region and we hope that it shall usher in new benefits for the local population”.

“Various C-DAC projects undertaken till date have dealt with multilingual technologies, high performance computing, agri-electronics, disaster management and health informatics. The outcome of the projects will be of great significance for both C-DAC and the people of the NE region, as I am sure that it will enable us to address a wide range of developmental issues in the region. We thank the people for enabling us to share our technological expertise for the common good of the region.”

PARAM Sheersh facility is a supercomputing facility created by C-DAC at NEHU, funded by Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India under the North East Sector Projects.

The facility aims at conducting research in strategic areas of weather, seismic, bio-informatics, physics, computational fluid dynamics, material sciences, life sciences etc. The facility shall serve as a core back-bone platform for students, faculty and researchers of the region to develop competency skills for solving challenging problems in the above mentioned areas.

PARAM Sheersh facility consists of 4 TF peak supercomputing power along with 10 TB high performance storage scratch space and 24 TB on-line storage, the facility has C-DAC’s indigenously-designed low latency PARAMNet-3 switch along with NIC, drivers, software etc. Back-up network based on Infiniband is also present. The management capability is over Gigabit Ethernet. The system primarily has a lot of open source tools, software along with C-DAC’s own Resource Access and Management Portal. The entire environment such as data centre and associated equipments has been established by C-DAC.

Cure@Home is a Decision Support System with a knowledge base of integrative (allopathy, ayurveda, homeopathy, yoga) medicine to address the healthcare needs of the common man. It is a health educational tool, which can be deployed on personal computers or at kiosks. It can be used at home, clinics, hospitals, healthcare centres, public places and schools. Cure@Home educates the common man on promotive health and disease prevention.

Cure@Home is targeted at primary care of diseases, thus, to minimise burden on the healthcare delivery system. It offers home remedies for diseases and symptoms, as well as advice on diet and lifestyle according to constitution, diseases, seasons etc. The features also include a multimedia gallery for easy perception and interactive applications like Body Mass Index (BMI) calculator, Waist Hip Ratio (WHR) calculator, Immunisation Scheduler, Expected Date of Delivery calculator etc.

Dr Medha Dhurandhar, chief co-ordinator (NE Projects), C-DAC, said, “The NE region is a high priority area of development for C-DAC. Cure@Home is a product that is borne out of the co-operation between C-DAC’s experts as well as resource persons from the NE region. This partnership shall not only benefit the common man but also create new opportunities for the development of the region.” ( www.moneycontrol.com )