8th DAE – Vision for Information Exchange (DAE-VIE 2010) was held at Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), Indore during Dec. 9-10, 2010. Sh. S. S. Bajaj, Chairman, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), Mumbai was chief guest of the inaugural function held on 9th Dec. 2010 and Dr. P. D. Gupta, Director, RRCAT presided over the function. The keynote talk was delivered by Dr. R. Govindrajan, Chairman, Supercomputer Education and Research Centre (SERC), Indian Institute of science (IISc), Bengaluru. Dr. Anil Rawat, convener of the meet welcomed the guests and participants. Dr. Rawat informed the audience the details of two day technical meet of IT Professionals of DAE.

Dr P.D. Gupta welcomed Sh. S. S. Bajaj, Dr. R. Govindrajan, invitees and colleagues from various units of Department of Atomic Energy. In his presidential address, Dr. Gupta threw light on the activities being pursued in RRCAT related to non-nuclear front-line research areas of Lasers, Particle Accelerators and associated technologies. He mentioned that Information Technology has played a very crucial and important role for programmes at RRCAT and also for various research and development programmes of Department of Atomic Energy. He highlighted that it is practically impossible for any professional, be scientist or engineer, to work without use of Information Technology. He also mentioned that Computer Centre, RRCAT is an important wing of activities at RRCAT, which participates in R&D activities in various ways and they host high-end computing clusters for scientific and engineering applications, provide state of art facilities for email and internet access, ensure information security, develop and deploy information management systems for in-house applications and many other related tasks. He also informed that we are in the final stage of commissioning of High Density Data Centre Hall with racks capable of installing high-end computing clusters and servers. He expressed the need to ensure that IT infrastructure operates reliably and with proper fall back arrangement for uninterrupted services. He mentioned that Government of India has given special attention to usage of IT in education and research and National Knowledge Network (NKN) is an outcome of such initiatives. DAE is also playing a very major role in this initiative.

In his inaugural speech, Sh. S. S. Bajaj, AERB, Mumbai mentioned the importance of Software Quality Assurance (SQA) in the process of commissioning of nuclear power plants and also highlighted the pivotal role of AERB for ensuring reliability in this regard. In a very lucid manner Sh. Bajaj conveyed the gathering about role of computer based systems and computer codes in nuclear power plants. He highlighted the importance of software verification and validation in such critical systems.

Dr. R. Govindarajan, Chairman, Supercomputer Education and Research Centre, IISc, Bengaluru, delivered keynote talk on “Challenges and Opportunities in Heterogeneous Multi-core Architecture”. He discussed about latest trends in Processor Architecture, Programming Challenges and other related topics. He highlighted that Multi-cores and Heterogeneous accelerators present tremendous research opportunities in Architectures, High Performance Computing, Compilers, Programming Languages & Models.

The inaugural function was conducted by Smt. Alpana Rajan, Organizing Secretary, DAE-VIE 2010 and she also proposed the vote of thanks.

Delegates from various units of DAE attended the meet. During the two days meet, invited talks were delivered on varied topics by Sh. A. G. Apte, Head, Computer Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, Sh. K. Bikshapati, General Manager, National Institute of Smart Government, Hyderabad, Dr. S. K. Sinha, Professor, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, Dr.Shubbhama Dey, Indian Institute of Management, Indore and Smt. Gazala Faizal, DGM, BSNL Indore.

Unit Presentations were made by delegates from BARC, IGCAR, NPCIL, VECC and RRCAT deliberating on achievements in last two years and plans for next year. Posters were presented during poster session by the young developers and researchers from various units of DAE. Special panel discussion on “How to meet challenges in fast changing field of IT” was conducted. Sh. A.G. Apte, Sh. Rajiv Bhargava, Sh. R.S. Mundada, Sh. R. Balasubramaniam and Dr. Anil Rawat expressed their views during panel discussion. Some of the participants also expressed their views.