Govt To Allot Rs 10,000 Crore For Quantum Computing Hubs By CIOTechOutlook Team

Govt To Allot Rs 10,000 Crore For Quantum Computing Hubs

CIOTechOutlook Team | Tuesday, 16 January 2024, 02:25 IST

According to officials familiar with the matter, the government is likely to set aside up to Rs 10,000 crore for the establishment of supercomputing and quantum computing hubs in collaboration with the private sector through public-private partnerships.

An announcement to this effect is likely to be made during Global Artificial Intelligence Summit and Awards scheduled to be held here on January 18 and 19, a government official said, as per economic times.

The proposed hubs will offer access to high-performance computing to startups, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and other companies, either on lease or on a “compute-as-a-service” basis, another senior official said.

“The idea is to add up to 30,000 GPUs (graphic processing units) overall in a somewhat DPI (digital public infrastructure) model,” the official said.

To begin, quantum computing hubs would be established in higher education academic institutions as well as prominent government research and development (R&D) centers, according to the official. “Overall, it may take up to 10 years to develop the total computing strength,” the person added.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) was considering a proposal to establish a cluster of 25,000 GPUs through public-private partnerships, which would be made available to Indian companies working on artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies that require high computing capacity.

Aside from the declaration of compute capacity as a service, the government may also announce the adoption of the majority of the AI suggestions from seven working groups, according to a senior MeitY official.

The seven working groups submitted their reports in October of last year. Their ideas included establishing a data management office, a national center for artificial intelligence (AI), training in AI, and determining how to assure responsible execution of a national AI policy.