India has to move from service provider to a product nation by exploring energies technologies: Ashwini Vaishnaw

The Hindu Bureau

India has a huge need to move from a service provider to a product nation, taking advantage of emerging technologies, including quantum computing, high performance computing and artificial intelligence, said Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Minister for Railways, Information and Broadcasting, and Electronics & Information Technology, here on Tuesday.

The Minister was addressing online supercomputing experts and entrepreneurs and policy makers gathered from across India and overseas at the inaugural ceremony of the maiden edition of Supercomputing India 2025 (SCI 2025) held at the Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT), Yelahanka.

Speaking on the occasion, Jitin Prasada, Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology, highlighted that the government has various mission mode programmes which have been initiated as part of moving towards a product nation.

Quantum computing

Responding to a query on why quantum computing has suddenly received so much hype, Thomas Zacharia, senior vice president, technology partnership at AMD, on the sidelines of the conference, told The Hindu that this technology has been demonstrated as useful in specific cases, and increasingly becoming relevant in recent years.

“So the excitement is that, while it has been a promise, today quantum computing can be utilised be for very specific and important applications that cannot be done in any other way, which is why it’s exciting,” he explained.

However, he agreed every technology has a hype cycle, but what we’re talking about here is that quantum computers have very good systems for quantum mechanical systems. So a certain class of problems can be effectively solved using quantum computers. And today, if we have demonstrated with a sufficient number of cubits that we can get real life solutions to where it is applicable, Mr. Zacharia explained.

SCI 2025 is India’s first comprehensive conference on high-performance computing, artificial intelligence and quantum computing, organised by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) under the aegis of the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) and joined by global collaborators.

The conference aims to foster a sustained HPC ecosystem across academia, industry, defence, space, healthcare and other strategic sectors, according to the organisers. The inaugural edition has attracted participation from leading global technology partners, including Intel, AMD, Arm, Dell, HPE, Applied Materials, AWS, and ASRock Rack, alongside India’s advanced computing ecosystem represented by VVDN, Kaynes, Velankani, MosChip, HCLTech, L&T Vyoma, MiPhi, Aheesa, Prolim, and BEL.