India's Own Supercomputers
Saturday, June 27, 1998; Page A14
Gary Milhollin overstates the role of U.S. exports to India in facilitating the development of nuclear weapons in that country ["Made in America," Outlook, June 7]. He singles out the sale of supercomputers and related software since 1994 as being crucial.
The reality is quite different: India, cognizant of the nuclear threat posed by China, set up the Center for Development of Advanced Computing in 1988 to produce indigenously advanced mainframes. The result was the PARAM family of supercomputers, each capable of more than 2 billion operations per second. Not unexpectedly, the 1996-97 annual report of the Indian government's Department of Electronics tellingly states that PARAM 9000 computers were used for "artificial intelligence-based solutions for defence."
In addition, Mr. Milhollin has some incorrect information. For instance, he expects the Sagarika missile to be based on submarines. In fact, the missile, named after the daughter of the then-chief of the Indian Navy, Adm. Ramdas, is a sea-based version of the Agni missile and is not capable of being launched from submarines.
R. S. KADIAN
Great Falls
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