In an ecosystem of a connected world, India is establishing its presence as a global innovation hub. Its potential for scaling innovations and digitalisation lies in its large and diverse talent pool, growing economy driven through conducive policies, and rapidly expanding technology sector. A key testimony to this is India’s goal to ensure technology sector accounts for 20-25% of the country’s GDP by 2025.
“India is a huge market and has been demonstrating its unique potential to scale and meet the moment. With the quality of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and number of graduates coming out of India each year, the growing knowledge workforce, dynamic entrepreneurial culture, along with rapid digitalisation, it’s both a market and an opportunity. India stands to become a technology and manufacturing leader in the world,” said Sandra L Rivera, executive vice-president and general manager, Data Centre and AI Group, Intel. “It’s an exciting time to be here, it’s a wonderful market for us to serve and the ecosystem to invest in,” she told FE in a recent interview.
Bullish on India
For Intel, India is a special market. The company has invested over $9 billion in India over the last three decades and continues to deepen its engineering and innovation charter here. Intel in India has around 14,000 employees, over 3,000 of whom are in the Data Centre and AI (DCAI) Group. They contribute significantly to the development of the Xeon CPU series, high-performance GPUs, FPGAs, and AI accelerators. In fact, Intel’s Gaudi2, which is its second-generation deep learning processor, has been developed by the India team in collaboration with the Intel team in Israel. Intel’s Habana Labs is responsible for developing the Gaudi processor.
“We have a very technical workforce here and we continue to invest in engineering including program, hardware, software, validation and all the work it takes to build products. We will be partnering with our customers and ecosystem players as we see the growing emphasis on data gravity and data sovereignty where data originating in India is processed within the country,” said Rivera. “India is going to be a huge consumption market for us as well. Therefore, the opportunity to build more infrastructure, data centres, enterprise and software ecosystem solutions is very exciting for us. It is one of the prime reasons why we continue to invest not only in the workforce but also in the market opportunities here.”
Intel also sees opportunities in the buildup of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original device manufacturers (ODMs) for electronics manufacturing in India. Some of its OEM and ODM partners are seeing the opportunity to invest in India. Intel will be partnering with them in their journey to deliver products to the market.
Strong focus on AI and sustainability
As artificial intelligence (AI) evolves rapidly, Intel is galvanising itself to establish leadership in this space. The company is committed to democratising AI with an open, cost-effective, scalable approach that expands AI everywhere – from the cloud and to the edge.
On the product leadership front, Intel’s AI acceleration capabilities in 4th Gen Intel Xeon and Habana Gaudi2 make these products compelling. Talking about Gaudi2, Rivera said it delivers better performance than Nvidia’s A-100, which is the most pervasive GPU today. “Our chip does not have more raw performance when compared to the H-100 right now. But it’s very well-positioned from a price-performance perspective because the H-100 is very expensive,” she said. Intel will be launching its third-generation Gaudi chips – Gaudi3 in 2024 and claims that it will compete effectively with Nvidia’s H-100 and even their next-generation chips. In 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors (codenamed Sapphire Rapids), it has introduced a ‘power optimised mode’ which utilises 20% less power, thus saving energy.
The Growth Charter
- Intel has invested over $9 billion in India so far
- Has around 14,000 employees, over 3,000 in Data Centre and AI Group
- India team builds 2nd gen deep learning processor, Gaudi2, along with Intel team in Israel
- Sees opportunities in the buildup of OEMs and ODMs for electronics manufacturing here
