Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited India earlier this month, where he discussed the country’s potential in the AI sector. As the US clamps down on exports of high-end chips to China and the world seeks an alternative electronics manufacturing base, India could shape up to be a source of AI talent, site for chip production, and market for Nvidia’s products. The trip was so crammed that Huang admitted to surviving entire work days on spicy masala omelets and cold coffees.
Hang expressed appreciation for India’s strides in this sector and was equally upbeat about the talented youth of India. He also told one executive in India’s tech hub Bangalore that he is a big believer in the country’s engineering talent, particularly graduates from its top engineering schools, Indian Institutes of Technology. “You have the data, you have the talent,” Huang said at a news conference in Bangalore. “This is going to be one of the largest AI markets in the world.”
Nvidia and India share a shared interest in betting on and speeding up the country’s AI ascendancy. Chipmakers cannot sell top-end microprocessors to China, which accounts for a fifth of Nvidia’s sales, amid fears the chips could be used to develop autonomous weaponry or wage cyberwarfare. India is the only market remaining so it isn’t surprising that Nvidia wants to put multiple eggs in that basket.”
While Indian engineers are a vital part of the digital workforce, the country is still far away from developing the cutting-edge capabilities needed to manufacture Nvidia’s sophisticated chips. However, India has ambitions to boost electronics manufacturing as well as harness AI to buoy its digital economy. The country is plowing billions in subsidies to set up chip manufacturing infrastructure to lure the likes of Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., and Intel Corp.
India has had reasonable success in enticing giants Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to shift contract electronics manufacturing from China. Now, it is turning to semiconductors, armed with some experience in chip design and no history whatsoever in semiconductor foundries. Nearly all cutting-edge chips, including those designed by Nvidia, are made in Taiwan. Over several decades, the country spent billions to reach current levels of manufacturing sophistication.
India wants to catch up, but it faces challenges turning itself into an AI hub. The country currently has no exascale compute capacity – being able to handle a billion billion calculations per second – nor the ready AI talent capable of writing sophisticated software. As India’s digital economy grows, the government is mandating data security, data privacy, and data localization, and this could require over 100,000 GPUs to build AI cloud infrastructure.
Nvidia already has four engineering centers in India, including in Bangalore and in the Gurgaon suburbs of Delhi, with a total of 4,000 engineers, its second-biggest talent pool after the US. Huang held town halls at each of the locations and stressed the importance of remaining competitive in a rapidly evolving AI marketplace.
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Source: NDTV
