What is it?
The Indian government’s think-tank NITI Aayog recently released an approach paper to set up India’s first AI-specific cloud computing infrastructure called ‘AIRAWAT’ (AI Research, Analytics and Knowledge Assimilation platform).
This platform aims to guide the research and development of new and emerging technologies.
AIRAWAT will be established based on the recommendations made by the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (NSAI).
Top 5 Supercomputers in the World
Under the AIRAWAT initiative,
- The government plans to build a series of supercomputers with the help of microprocessor manufacturers, like NVIDIA and Intel. The supercomputer facilities will be hosted at various academic institutes like IITs, IISc, etc and these academic institutes will be at the forefront of AI research. They are also expected to act as guides and mentors for other institutes in this domain
- Going ahead, the government will be building AI-specific compute infrastructure that will help the computing needs of Centres of Research Excellence (COREs), International Centers Transformational AI (ICRAIs) and Innovation Hubs.
AIRAWAT is being modelled after the Summit and ABCI facilities in the US and Japan, respectively. Both of which are run by state-sponsored research institutes. And like in other countries, AIRAWAT is also expected to complement our current mandate of building 70 high-performance computing facilities in India.
Currently, India has just two supercomputers among the 500 best computers in the world — 226 of which are in China, and 113 in the US. With AIRAWAT, the hope is that India can also compete with these superpowers.
Read NITI Aayog's approach paper on AIRAWAT here
(Disclaimer : This blog is for information purposes only)
