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| Intel eyes UID project; to ride on biometrics, computing expertise |
| Leslie D'Monte / New Delhi Oct 09, 2009, 00:51 IST |
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 Leveraging its experience in the field of biometrics and leadership in the computing space, the world’s largest chip maker, Intel, hopes to attract a significant pie of the business that will arise from the Indian government’s Unique Identity (UID) project, which is headed by former Infosys head Nandan Nilekani.
Biometrics (which includes fingerprint, face and iris recognition) and computing power hold the keys to Nilekani’s UID project. Which is estimated to offer a Rs 15,000-20,000 crore opportunity to computing, database, smartcard and storage vendors, besides systems integrators. For every rupee of IT spend on the UID project, industry experts estimate, around 60 per cent of the spending will go to hardware vendors.
“We have deeply thought about the project and how Intel can work with the Indian government on the project. We’ve also had a meeting with Nilekani in this regard. However, since the project is in its infancy, I cannot comment on how our dialogue will eventually pan out,” Ramamurthy Sivakumar, managing director (sales and marketing - South Asia), told Business Standard.
It’s not difficult to connect the dots, though. The Karnataka government has already started working on a similar UID project, for which it has reportedly earmarked around Rs 1,800 crore. IT companies, including IBM, TCS, Wipro, Intel, HP and Sun Microsystems, are understood to have signed agreements with the state government and are to start work soon. Sivakumar, however, declined to comment on specific projects.
Nilekani, on his part, has categorically stated that the UID is just a number and not a card. However, the number is given after a citizen is enrolled at different centres across the country where his biometrics (face or fingerprint) are recorded and stored for retrieval when a need for identification arises.
This will entail the use of fingerprint readers (can even be done via cellphones with an appropriate device plugged into it as the project gathers momentum). Besides, the data need to be stored and retrieved. Each user will need around 10 megabytes of storage once enrolment starts, notes an official who is closely associated with the UID project.
“Multiply this number by a population of over 1 billion, and you will need nothing less than parallel processing to retrieve the data from the data centres and disaster recovery units,” he adds.
Intel’s expertise lies in providing chips for desktop, servers, supercomputers and parallel-processing tools. For instance, many biometric solutions across the world run on Intel processors. Last month, the US-based Amrel Systems unveiled an Intel Atom-based biometric handheld device to scan and detect face, fingerprint and iris patterns and eventually identify one’s identity while on the move. Moreover, ION handhelds, which are used for point-of-sale (PoS) applications, run on Intel’s Atom processor. And, as far back as 1998, Intel invested in a company called Digital Persona, a maker of personal identification systems based on biometrics.
Nilekani also speaks of “...online authentication which has not been done anywhere in the world till date”. Online authentication is currently being tested out by researchers in institutes abroad. This will require added computing power, data connectivity (like WiMax) and cloud computing expertise which Intel understands well.
Sivakumar, while declining to comment on specific technology contributions, admits that “...authenticating citizens in real-time requires a deep understanding and expertise in technology, besides computing capabilities, since it’s algorithms and computing power that is at work all the time”. He adds that “...it also opens up possibilities for hundreds and thousands of applications”.
For instance, banks may add the know your customer (KYC) norms to the UID number and thus necessitate the requirement of a smartcard with a processor to store additional data.
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