sridhar@tekig5.UUCP (S. Sridhar) (04/27/85)
PACT SIGNED WITH NORWAY FOR COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY
[from "The Hindu" International edition, dated April 20, 1985]
NEW DELHI, April 14.
India and Norway have signed an agreement on cooperative ventures of
computer technology. It was the outcome of a meeting of the delegations of
the countries held here on April 11 and 12.
From the Norwegian point of view, the agreement is unique in the sense that
it is for the first time it has entered into such an extensive technical
collaboration with any country. For India, the significance stems from the
fact that the cooperation will result in the availability of high-speed
main-frame computers and in the transfer of "complete knowhow" software
packages - in the source code format- the likes of which have earlier been
refused to the country by the US. This agreement has conditions whatsoever
on the proposed transfer of technology.
This development is a follow-up of the memorandum of understanding (MOU)
between India and Norway in Oslo in October 1984.
Software Development: The accent of the collaboration will be on highly
specialised software development, suited to the Norwegian computer systems
and may be even to a third country, especially from West Asia.
After the U.S imposed embargoes on various advanced computer technologies,
India evinced interest in the Norwegian achievement. As many as six main-
frame computers have already been installed at BARC, Bombay, the first one
having arrived in December 1983. These are ND 560/ND 570 32-bit machines of
Norsk Data Corporation with a 32 Mb memory and 3.3 MIPS, which can be pushed
to 7 MIPS in an "optimised Fortran operation". The indicated speeds are
higher than some of the systems which could not be obtained from the U.S.
Five more machines: Five similar machines are due to come in shortly as part
of this agreement. Three ND-560 systems will be received by the National
Informatics Centre(NIC) of the Dept. of Electronics to be placed at the
existing regional CAD centres in Bombay, Kanpur and Jadavpur. A ND 560
system for the Natl. Inst of Oceanography, Goa which has been under
negotiation for some time has also been finalised. The fifth machine, which
has already arrived and is awaiting custom clearance in Bombay, is for the
Employees Federation of India, Bombay. The total cost of these is slightly
over Rs 5 crores.