What are GPUs? Why is India scrambling for them?
Since GPUs are scarce and very expensive, the Indian government has two options: let businesses and industry solve its own GPU problem or spend public money to make GPUs more accessible to startups, research bodies and key industries, just as it has done with the Production-linked Incentives (PLI) scheme to promote key industries for its Make in India mission. In the first case, India will remain a laggard in AI and other emerging technologies; in the second, it can emerge as a new-age tech hub. Large domestic computing capacity also ensures a country's data sovereignty.
The government has realised the importance of GPUs for India and is working to find a solution. It may strike a deal with Nvidia, the world's biggest GPU producer, to source graphics processing units (GPUs) from it, and offer them to local startups, researchers, academic institutions and other users at a subsidised rate under its Rs 10,000 crore Artificial Intelligence Mission, ET has reported based on information form sources.
What exactly are GPUs, and what is their use?
GPU, as the name suggests, is basically a technology that can render graphics better. A more familiar related technology is the CPU, or central processing unit, which is the brain of a computer. A GPU is often called a computer's heart or soul. GPUs are an evolved form of CPUs for their capacity of parallel computing. While the CPU mostly tackles tasks one by one, the GPU can break a huge and complex task into thousands or millions of small parts and execute them at once.
