India's computing infrastructure is less than 2% of global capacity which is a limiting factor in its contribution to research that remains in the range of 2%, according to a senior official of GPU chip maker NVIDIA.
While speaking at StartUp Mahakumbh, NVIDIA Asia South MD Vishal Dhupar on Monday said that the contribution of research from Indians abroad is around 12% due to the availability of computing infrastructure.
"India today is approximately sub-2% as compared to US and China combined is closer to 58-59%. If you go back and figure out why the research in India is as low as,what it is, we are talking about India's contribution, of 2%. There is a direct correlation to that. Indians who basically contribute to the research bit are not based in India are contributing 12% because infrastructure is available there," Dhupar said.
The demand for GPU-based servers or accelerated computing has increased as they can process data at a higher speed compared to CPU-based servers.
The race for AI development among global companies has led to a shortage of GPUs.
According to industry estimates, NVIDIA dominates the GPU market with about 88% share and there is a lag of 12-18 months in getting GPUs from the company due to its high demand across the globe.
The Cabinet has approved the India AI Mission with an outlay of Rs 10,372 crore for five years to encourage AI development in the country.
Under the mission, supercomputing capacity, comprising over 10,000 graphics processing units, will be made available to various stakeholders for creating an AI ecosystem.
"For researchers, you need infrastructure-the tool on which research happens and that is something which is in progress. Of course, we are very excited about what the government has announced. That is a great start," Dhupar said.
Reliance, Tata, Yotta, Netweb and some of the other Indian companies have collaborated with NVIDIA to build and install GPU-based servers in India.
Dhupar said that the machines ordered by Yotta have landed in the country and will be deployed soon in the country.
Hiranandani group-owned data centre company Yotta Data Services plans to install over 20,400 NVIDIA GPU-based supercomputers by June 2024.
"If we can build accelerated computing infrastructure quickly and fast, research will happen and more importantly you will add $1 trillion to the economy," Dhupar said.
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