Inauguration of the advanced 650 teraflops supercomputing facility at the National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI) was done online by Union Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Jitendra Singh on Tuesday.

The facility has come up under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) in collaboration with C-DAC, Pune.

Established and funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) with an approximate cost of Rs 20 crore, this high-end facility will be helpful in the analysis of large-scale genomics, functional genomics and structural genomics data.

This 650 teraflops supercomputing facility will uniquely cater to the needs of the interdisciplinary cutting-edge research being carried out at the institute in the areas of? Agricultural and Nutritional Biotechnology, according to an official release.

Addressing the gathering, Singh highlighted that the NSM is an important initiative of the Indian Government.

"This mission will create a cluster of supercomputers that will connect academic and research institutes across the country. The mission will also cater to the ever increasing computation demand of the academia and research institutes and will process research calculations very fast," he said.

He also highlighted that this important initiative will also support the country's vision of 'Digital India”. The union minister tweeted his photos from the event,?

Ashwani Pareek, Executive Director, NABI said this supercomputer facility will be available for the scientists of NABI and Center of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing as well as will be open to collaborative work for the scientists/faculties working in the neighboring institutes/universities and for the few projects sanctioned under NSM.

In another related event, Singh inaugurated i-RISE, Technology Business Incubator (TBI) at Mohali and said that it will provide world-class research facilities for start-ups in the country.

He said with the formation of this TBI, Mohali will join the league of other start-up hubs in the country like Bengaluru and Gurgaon, according to an official release.

Singh said that due to various schemes, focus and support system provided by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, 10,000 start-ups got registered in India in 2021 alone. He said, India now has 50,000 plus start-ups providing more than 2 lakh jobs in the country.

(With PTI Inputs)