India, Nvidia, discuss jointly developed AI chip

India's government is reportedly in talks with Nvidia to co-develop AI silicon.

Local outlet the Economic Times on Tuesday quoted minister for electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw as confirming "Yes, we are discussing with Nvidia the development of an AI chip; discussions are at a preliminary stage."

Just what's being discussed is not known, but India is definitely keen to develop a semiconductor manufacturing industry and to expand its already-substantial role as a source of chip design talent.

New Delhi has launched an "AI mission" that makes development of AI infrastructure a priority. Plans are afoot to build a 10,000-GPU supercomputer. Funding has also been made available to fund service providers who want to offer GPUs for rent. The rules for that project were recently modified to allow smaller service providers that may struggle to afford bulk GPU buys to offer more modest clusters.

India has also pledged that it won't be shy about putting AI to work in the service of citizens.

The Economic Times report suggests talks between Nvidia and India have considered chips for specific Indian use cases - such as security systems for the nation's vast railway networks.

Nvidia already offers video analytics and smart city products, plenty of them built on its Orin edge AI platform. Hitachi has already used that hardware in real-time railway analysis tools.

But the Arm Cortex-A78AE processors present in much Orin hardware are well and truly beyond the capabilities of the few semiconductor manufacturing plants currently being built in India. The Register cannot imagine those chips - or other Nvidia hardware - will emerge from an Indian fab this decade.

That leaves a design collaboration as a more likely outcome.

We may learn what India and Nvidia are cooking up very soon, as the GPU giant's CEO Jensen Huang is delivering a fireside chat at an event in Mumbai this week. ®