Made in India: AI supercomputer with 10,000 GPUs to reduce dependence on foreign systems

The Indian government has approved a funding package of ₹10,300 crore ($1.24 billion) to strengthen the country’s AI infrastructure. A planned supercomputer with at least 10,000 GPUs forms the core of this project. The government has not released any further details about the machine, which will be part of the IndiaAI Compute Capacity, but expects that a public-private partnership will be required to build the supercomputer. Another plan is to set up a new academic institution, the IndiaAI Innovation Centre, to lead the development and implementation of fundamental models. It is expected to focus on indigenous Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) and domain-specific models. The center will focus on “leveraging edge and distributed computing for optimal efficiency”.

Funds will also flow into three other initiatives:

The IndiaAI Startup Funding Mechanism will facilitate funding to accelerate commercialization for both startups and industry-leading AI projects.
The IndiaAI dataset platform will receive more funding to enhance public sector datasets so that local AI companies and the government have the required data for appropriate AI applications.
The IndiaAI FutureSkills program will increase access to graduate and post-graduate AI programs and set up data and AI labs offering basic courses in data and AI across India – especially outside major cities.

Two objectives of the funding package are to “promote technological self-reliance” and “democratize the benefits of AI across all strata of society

India plans to develop server CPUs based on the RISC-V architecture, but there is no evidence of such devices being developed yet. India is also not present in the GPU space. However, there is a push to promote indigenous LLMs as India is mandated by law to promote 22 scheduled languages. The development of LLMs for languages with fewer speakers such as Malayalam or Punjabi may not be prioritized by the AI giants. India obviously intends to take on these kinds of tasks itself. Another gap in India’s announcement is the kind of private partners sought to accelerate local AI development. India has a difficult relationship with Big Tech and regulates it strictly, while creating public digital goods aimed at making it harder for tech companies to build monopolies.

Source: theregister