Govt to issue notice to procure more GPUs under IndiaAI Mission

On January 30, the IT ministry announced that it has procured above 18,000 GPUs under the IndiaAI Mission

The Indian government is set to issue a notice to procure more graphics processing units (GPUs) under the IndiaAI Mission on January 31.

As of now, the government has procured nearly 19,000 GPUs under the IndiaAI Mission, and intends to make them available for startups and researchers on a portal at subsidised rates.

"There will be an opportunity to add more GPUs every quarter. The ministry is already issuing the proposals for the procurement of GPUs for the next phase," said IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on January 30.

Another senior government official said that the notice will be issued on January 31, and there are chances that prices for GPUs may decrease further than what it is right now.

In the current empanelment process, L1 and L2 bidders will supply the GPUs.  L1 bidders include E2E Networks, Jio Platforms, Ctrls Datacenters, CMS Computers, Locuz Enterprise Solutions, NxtGen Datacenter & Cloud Technologies. L2 bidders include Orient Technologies, Tata Communications, Vensysco Technologies, and Yotta Data Services.

However, the government intends the empanelment process to be continuous, and other entities can also be part of the process.

Of the total 18,693 GPUs that have been procured by the government, 12,896 Nvidia are H100 GPUs, 1,480 are Nvidia H200 GPUs and rest are other high-performance AI chips from AMD, Intel and AWS.

As many as 10,000 GPUs are ready for immediate use, while the rest will be deployed gradually.