India's AI Mission: Govt to Support Compute Capacity

New Delhi, Sep 19 (PTI) The government may look at creating more "compute capacity" through viability gap funding after building high-tech capability under the Rs 10,372-crore India AI mission, Electronics and IT Secretary S Krishnan said on Thursday.

Addressing a Deloitte India event, Krishnan said that India AI Mission has an outlay of about 10,372 crore of which more than Rs 4,500 crore is intended for compute capacity.

"Later on, there is a possibility, and we will decide based on how much compute capacity actually gets created in the country. There is a possibility that we would actually support more compute capacity being created on the viability gap funding," Krishnan said.

The government has invited bids for the empanelment of entities for providing artificial intelligence services on the cloud under the India AI mission. Under the IndiaAI Mission, supercomputing capacity, comprising over 10,000 GPUs, will be made available to various stakeholders for creating an artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem.

The rapid development of AI across the globe has led to an increase in demand for GPU-based servers, as they can process data at a higher speed compared to CPU-based servers.

Krishnan said the vision is to create capacity in a public-private partnership model.

"There are two models that we are attempting. The first one has already launched the RFPs out there, and that is more a voucher base approach where we are asking people who have already created AI compute capacity to make it available to innovators, startups and MSMEs and academic institutions at a subsidised price," He said.

Under the India AI mission, the government has proposed to pay up to 50 per cent of the cost by giving vouchers to various institutions and others.

He said that the compute capacity is also being created under National Supercomputer Mission (NSM) that will mainly meet public sector requirements.