The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is an Indian autonomous scientific society, operating under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology C-DAC was created in November 1988, originally as the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing Technology (C-DACT). This was in response to issues purchasing supercomputers from foreign sources. After being denied a Cray supercomputer by the United States in 1988, due to military use concerns, India started a programme to develop an indigenous supercomputer and C-DAC was created as part of this programme. Supercomputers were considered a double-edged weapon capable of assisting in the development of nuclear weapons. Dr Vijay Bhatkar was hired as the Director of C-DAC. The project was given an initial run of 3 years and an initial funding of ₹30,00,00,000 as the same amount of money and time was usually expended to secure the purchase of a supercomputer from the US. A prototype computer was benchmarked at the 1990 Zurich Super-computing Show: it demonstrated that India had the second most powerful, publicly-demonstrated , supercomputer in the world after the United States. The final result of the effort was the PARAM 8000, released in 1991. It is considered to be India's first supercomputer.