India In Talks With NVIDIA To Develop Custom Chip

Minister for Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw confirmed on Tuesday that the government is in preliminary discussions with chip making giant NVIDIA for the development of AI chips in the country. According to a report in The Economic Times, the minister acknowledged the ongoing talks, though specific details remain under wraps.

The scope of this collaboration may become clearer this week, as NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is scheduled to participate in a chat at an upcoming event in Mumbai. He also proposed developing a chip jointly, the report added.

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The announcement comes as part of India's broader "AI Mission," which includes several ambitious initiatives, including:

• Development of a massive 10,000-GPU supercomputer
• Establishment of GPU rental services with government backing
• Recent policy modifications to include smaller service providers in the GPU rental programme
• Commitment to implementing AI solutions for public services

Focus On Transportation, Security

Industry sources, as quoted by the report, suggest the collaboration might target specific Indian use cases, particularly in transportation security. The nation's extensive railway network could benefit from specialised AI solutions, following precedents set by companies like Hitachi using NVIDIA's Orin edge AI platform for railway analysis.

Manufacturing Challenges

Despite India's push to develop its semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, current technological limitations suggest that producing advanced chips like NVIDIA's Arm Cortex-A78AE processors locally remains years away. This points toward a likely focus on chip design collaboration rather than immediate manufacturing plans.