<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The first official said that Nvidia\u2019s product roadmap shows that by 2028, cutting-end chips will be based on the 2nm node. \u201cThis 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. \u201cThat\u2019s what our GPU will achieve too, but at a much, much lower cost.”<\/p>\n
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\u2019s iPhones, among other consumer devices.<\/p>\n
Since ChatGPT\u2019s debut in 2022, GPUs have become essential to AI\u2014boosting Nvidia\u2019s value tenfold and making it the world\u2019s second-most valuable company. Despite India\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The second official cited above said that an early preview of the chip will be showcased by end-2025, whichMint<\/i>had 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 \u201cwe\u2019ll likely be manufacturing it at scale with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (TSMC)”, the second official said, adding that the Indian GPU will cost \u201cup to 50% less than what Nvidia currently retails its chips at”.<\/p>\n
An email requesting comment on the matter from Meity and C-Dac remained unanswered till press time.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cSince then, we\u2019ve been engineering an indigenous GPU from the ground-up,” this official said. \u201cBy 2030, we\u2019ll be installing it on C-Dac\u2019s cloud servers and supercomputers\u2014making it accessible to academia, researchers and startups to make our own sovereign AI models and run cloud platforms.”<\/p>\n
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, toldMint<\/i>that \u201ca domestic GPU patent based on the government-funded research bodies is imperative, especially seeing that almost all chips today are owned by the US”.<\/p>\nSecurity concern<\/h2>\n
\u201cThe 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 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. \u201cAn 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.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, C-Dac\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The body is well-funded, too. In FY24, C-Dac had capital fund allocation of \u20b9<\/span>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.<\/p>\n To be sure, the $200-million engineering design cost of the indigenous GPU will be spread over five years\u2014from fiscals FY25 through FY29,according to the first official.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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. The first official said that Nvidia\u2019s product roadmap shows that by 2028, cutting-end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394552,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[36722,284,188,183,36724,185,186,289,187,184,3906,36723,189,150,182,190],"class_list":["post-394550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-2-nanometre-gpu","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-blockchain-tech","tag-blockchain-technology","tag-c-dac","tag-crypto-technology","tag-cryptocurrency-technology","tag-india","tag-metaverse-technology","tag-nft-technology","tag-nvidia","tag-semiconductor-ips","tag-soul-bound-token","tag-tech","tag-technology","tag-token-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":394554,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394550\/revisions\/394554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}