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Mint
2 days ago
- Business
- Mint
Sovereign silicon: India targets indigenous 2nm, Nvidia-level GPU by 2030
India is racing to build its own 2-nanometre GPU (graphics processing unit) from scratch by 2030, with an aim to match global market leader Nvidia Corp.'s projected roadmap and strengthen its home base for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and products. With $200 million in funding, engineers at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-Dac) in Bengaluru have been tasked with developing the chip, according to four senior officials familiar with the matter, three of whom are directly involved in the project. Also read | Nvidia pushes further into cloud with GPU marketplace The first official said that Nvidia's product roadmap shows that by 2028, cutting-end chips will be based on the 2nm node. 'This means that by 2030, the best GPUs in mainstream circulation in data centres and for AI training will be at this standard," this official said. 'That's what our GPU will achieve too, but at a much, much lower cost." To be sure, the smaller the nanometre size, the more advanced the chip. The most advanced mainstream chips of today are of 3 nanometre, such as the ones found in Apple's iPhones, among other consumer devices. Since ChatGPT's debut in 2022, GPUs have become essential to AI—boosting Nvidia's value tenfold and making it the world's second-most valuable company. Despite India's strong chip design talent, it lacks homegrown GPU patents, leaving the country dependent on US firms for core AI technology. It is this dependence that the country is looking to change. The second official cited above said that an early preview of the chip will be showcased by end-2025, whichMinthad reported last month. However, once the 2nm chip is developed by C-Dac, India is unlikely to get in the next five years a domestic fabrication plant with the capability to manufacture such chips, which is why 'we'll likely be manufacturing it at scale with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (TSMC)", the second official said, adding that the Indian GPU will cost 'up to 50% less than what Nvidia currently retails its chips at". An email requesting comment on the matter from Meity and C-Dac remained unanswered till press time. A chip customer To be sure, India has historically been a customer for US chipmakers Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Qualcomm and Nvidia, but an executive order by former US president Joe Biden, signed last year, showed that in case of conflicts, the US can restrict access to critical chips to India or any other nation. The third official cited above said that this order was a key moment for India to start seriously weighing the idea of building its own chip. 'Since then, we've been engineering an indigenous GPU from the ground-up," this official said. 'By 2030, we'll be installing it on C-Dac's cloud servers and supercomputers—making it accessible to academia, researchers and startups to make our own sovereign AI models and run cloud platforms." Also read | Home-made chips: India's GPUs set for year-end trials Industry stakeholders have for long urged India to develop its proprietary semiconductor IPs for geopolitical independence. Last month, Ajai Chowdhry, chairman of HCL and cofounder of industry body Epic Foundation, toldMintthat 'a domestic GPU patent based on the government-funded research bodies is imperative, especially seeing that almost all chips today are owned by the US". Security concern 'The necessity of sovereign technologies also comes from a security concern," said Ashok Chandak, president of industry body, India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (Iesa), pointing out that much of the chip supply chain is today reliant on China. 'In the long run, being reliant on China can make critical chips such as those used in CCTVs or automation in industrial infrastructure vulnerable to back doors," Chandak said. 'An indigenous chip will address all of these concerns. Having our own GPU chip is also vital, since it can allow India to not only make and train its own AI on such a chip, but also market it to the rest of the world." Also read | No GPUs: How Ziroh Labs is running AI model just with CPUs Meanwhile, C-Dac's objective is to offer the indigenous GPU as a system-on-a-chip (SoC) board, which will work as a full-stack system including memory chips, computing processor and connectivity modems as well. The body is well-funded, too. In FY24, C-Dac had capital fund allocation of ₹1,056 crore ($122 million) for the year from the Centre, per its annual report for the fiscal. Two of the officials cited above said that this figure has been increased in FY25. To be sure, the $200-million engineering design cost of the indigenous GPU will be spread over five years—from fiscals FY25 through FY29,according to the first official.
Mint
15-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
Home-made chips: India's GPUs set for year-end trials
India will begin trials of its first homemade graphic processing units before the end of this year, two senior officials familiar with the matter said, crossing a milestone in the development of components at the heart of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The chips will be general-purpose GPUs, or GPGPUs, with the potential use across a wide range of tasks. In the long run, the goal is to replace chips from global giants such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm in data centres, AI model training, analytics, cloud platforms, supercomputers and critical communications infrastructure, among others. 'About 29 prototypes of these indigenous GPGPUs will be produced in India by the end of this year. Following this, agencies associated with the development process will collate data on performance, reliability and efficiency, since the idea will be to ensure that the product in question is not just indigenous, but also at par with global standards set by the US," one of the officials cited above said on the condition of anonymity. Also read | No GPUs, no problem: Ziroh Labs can run AI models just with CPUs On 5 February, Mint reported that the Centre was in the process of designing its own 'AI chip', setting a tentative deadline of 2027 for local production. The project is headed by Meity, with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-Dac) and National e-Governance Division (NeGD) working on it. The GPGPUs are being built on an existing indigenous semiconductor architecture developed by C-Dac, based on open-source standards. After trials, the GPGPUs will be finetuned before being put up for mass production and commercial scaling by 2029, the two officials said on the condition of anonymity. 'What an indigenous GPGPU will do is help India reduce its dependency on global firms, and their ability to restrict access to critical computing infrastructure in crucial moments. It's not possible for India to do everything independently—a GPU typically uses myriad associated patents and intellectual properties (IPs). But, what the indigenous chip will do is that India will no longer need to outright buy GPUs for projects such as sovereign cloud deployment, or training of AI models at an academic level," the second official said. Read this | Nvidia's Blackwell GPU may reach Indian shores as early as October Currently, the US has an outsize impact on the global market for semiconductor patents. In 2024, the US earned 72% of the global revenue related to semiconductor design, data from market researcher Gartner showed. In its 2019 trade tiff with China, the US fully leveraged its leadership position in semiconductors to hurt Huawei Electronics, then one of the top global tech conglomerates. It is this situation that India eventually wants to avoid. Custom GPUs can be deployed in homegrown supercomputers, improving access to central computing infrastructure for academics and researchers, the second official said. "In the long run, the Centre plans to use domestic GPUs in homegrown cloud platforms and supercomputers which, in turn, could help India closely protect crucial technology patents. Beyond 2030, most strategic developments around the world will be hinged on technology, and every technology has semiconductors at its core—they simply cannot be avoided," the second official added. And read | Murugappa's chip testing plant to begin supplies next year, says JV partner Kanishka Chauhan, senior principal analyst at Gartner, said that challenges behind building an indigenous chip are manifold. 'Chips are designed on electronics design automation (EDA) tools, which have significant licensing fees that run into millions of dollars. Plus, design validation is an iterative process and is extremely time consuming, which necessitates sound financial backing for any entity pursuing it. GPUs also lack a standardized architecture unlike CPUs, which makes the engineering process required to build GPUs even more complicated," he said. Ashok Chandak, president of India Electronics and Semiconductor Association, added that the key thing to consider would be domestic value addition through the creation of IPs. 'Having your own production facilities as well as patents would be key to generating greater value. Most of the percentage of the cost of manufacturing in electronics is accounted for by semiconductor chips—having our own patents will help India further climb up the value chain," Chandak said. Read this | Mint Primer: Why India's first locally made chip will be a big deal
