• | 2:39 pm

Nvidia offers to co-develop chip with India: report

Indian government is currently holding primary discussions with Nvidia about developing an AI chip.

Nvidia offers to co-develop chip with India: report
[Source photo: Chetan Jha]

The US chipmaker Nvidia has proposed co-developing a semiconductor chip with India. The company’s founder, CEO Jensen Huang, is believed to have made this proposal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he met him in the US earlier this year, reported the Economic Times.

Citing people aware of this matter, ET reported that a jointly developed cloud-based chip could be tailored for India’s specific use, like Indian railways’ security system, Kavach.

Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw confirmed this development and told ET that the Indian government is currently holding primary discussions with Nvidia about developing an AI chip.

Officials also said the US chipmaker wants to develop this chip, leveraging India’s chip-designing talent. The Indian government is also working on details like cost, benefits, and use cases for this jointly developed chip.

According to people aware of this matter, the core chip will likely be designed by Nvidia’s chip design partners, such as Arm or AMD. At the same time, the top 10-30% layer is expected to be customized in India either at the government’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) or at a private chip design company.

Huang is visiting India later this week, and more details are likely to emerge during his visit. During his earlier visit in September last year, Huang and PM Modi discussed India’s AI potential and expressed their views on carrying out AI-related value additions within the country.

The US chipmaker’s market cap remains in the upper bracket as its graphics processing unit (GPU) became integral to its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.

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