Param Kilimanjaro: Tanzania’s Computer Made in India, could be fastest performing tower in East Africa

It was built in India and donated to Tanzania and currently installed at the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology in the Northern Region of Arusha.

The High Commissioner of India in Dar-es-salaam His Exellence Binaya Srikanta Pradhan, during the occasion to celebrate 77 years of India’s Independence, witnessed the upgrading of the Param Kilimanjaro Supercomputer that his country had donated to Tanzania.

The Param Kilimanjaro, manufactured on Dell Architecture is a supercomputer churning out big data at the The NM-AIST in the Tengeru section of Meru District in Arusha.

The Param Kilimanjaro digital towers at the NM-AIST is a 100 terabyte (100,000 gigabyte) fast machine.

The Kilimanjaro happens to be a more powerful machine in fact five-times more powerful, compared to the Param Serengeti which is operating at the Dar-es-Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT).

The Param Serengeti was also donated by the High Commissioner of India and it features 20 terabytes (20,000 gigabyte).

India provides East Africa’s most powerful supercomputer at Nelson Mandela Institute with more power

In order to ensure that Tanzania’s largest and highest performing computer brain remains power supplied against all odds, the High Commission of India in Dar-Es-salaam has reinforced the Param Kilimanjaro supercomputer with added 64 solar-powered standby batteries.

The added hardware accessories for uninterrupted power supply to the nation’s largest technological brain, is part of the upgradation scheme of India-Tanzania Information Communication Technology Center.

The centre operates at the Arusha campus of the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology located in the Tengeru Ward of Meru District.

The India High Commissioner to Tanzania, Binaya Srikanta handed the batteries to the Deputy Vice Chancellor of the Nelson Mandela Institute of Science and Technology, Professor Anthony Mshandete.

“The Param Kilimanjaro, which is the largest supercomputer in East Africa, was operating under capacity because of challenges arising from power shading, but now with auxiliary power supply it will attain its full potential,” said the Deputy Vice Chancellor.

On her part, the Acting Dean of School of Computation and Communication Science and Engineering, Dr Judith Leo, said the super computer is used for research, data dissemination, and high-level technical training and data management.

“India will continue to support Tanzania’s technological advancement in training, medicine and communication sectors,” stated the High Commissioner of India, Binaya Srikanta during the event.

He pointed out that the India-Tanzania Centre of Excellence in Information and Communication Technology initiative is already bearing fruits in the country.

Through the initiative, India helped to establish the country’s most powerful supercomputer, the Param-Kilimanjaro installed at Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology in Arusha.

Previously India installed another Param Serengeti High Speed Super Computer, IT laboratories, and tele-medicine center at the Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) which is linked to 10 remote regional hubs.

The Param-Kilimanjaro of Arusha is essentially five-times more powerful than the Param-Serengeti in Dar-es-salaam.

Supercomputer

A supercomputer is a highly intelligent computer with a high-level computational capacity compared to a general-purpose computer.

Performance of a supercomputer is measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS).

The India-Tanzania education relationship is as old as the 62 years of Independence, with more than 500 scholarships extended to students from Tanzania going to study in New Delhi or Mumbai.