Govt hopes to add another 15K GPUs in second round of IndiaAI mission

With these 15,000 GPUs, total number of GPUs in India could be 33,000

Graphics processing units (GPUs) in the country are expected to increase by 15,000 through procurement and supply in the second round of bidding, according to official sources. The deadline for the second round is April 30.

  With the addition of the 15,000 GPUs, the number of such high-end computing processors will go up to 33,000.

  In January this year, the government had received bids to procure and supply 18,693 GPUs against the target of 10,000 GPUs.

Though India is fast approaching the 50,000 GPU computer power cap, which has been imposed by the United States on several countries, the government is working on removing the barrier.

  High-level discussions, which could be part of the ongoing bilateral trade talks between India and the US, have taken these into account, a senior government official said.

  The GPUs will be procured and supplied by companies as part of the ₹10,372 crore IndiaAI Mission, which was approved by the Union Cabinet in March last year.

  After the first round of bidding, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology started a continuous empanelment process for companies wishing to place bids for procuring and supplying these high-end computing processors.

  The empanelment of new bidders now takes place every quarter. In the first round, the government had empanelled 10 companies to procure and supply 18,693 GPUs, which included 12,896 Nvidia H100 GPUs, 1,480 Nvidia H200 GPUs, MI325 and MI300X GPUs. 

  Jio Platforms, Tata Communications, and Yotta Data Services (owned by the Hiranandani group) are among the key players that passed muster for procuring and supplying GPUs to startups, academics, researchers, and other users in the country in the first round. Other firms such as CMS Computers India, Ctrls Datacentres, E2E Networks, and Locuz Enterprise Solutions have been shortlisted by the IT ministry in the first round. 

Based on the bids placed by the 10 companies, the average rate per AI (artificial intelligence) compute unit was discovered at ₹115.85 per GPU hour for the low-end units and ₹150 per hour for the high-end compute processing units against a global benchmark of roughly $2.5 to $3 per GPU hours.