By : Dr Ajai Chowdhry, Founder HCL, Chairman EPIC Foundation & MGB, National Quantum Mission of India
The US imposing restrictions on import of GPU’s to India brings us back to the old licensing regime to haunt us again. And China can follow with other technologies. And the rest of the West too. Imagine export of semiconductor manufacturing machines being restricted tomorrow which will stop our semiconductor ambitions!
This is reminiscent of the export controls on Space and Atomic energy that we faced in the past. And we then emerged out of that successfully getting our brilliant engineers creating our own technologies.
I am sure most of the design of NVIDIA and AMD GPU’s must have been done in India by Indian engineers.
Recently we had written about how critically we have to look at strategic autonomy and become self-sufficient in key technologies like semiconductors,quantum technologies, security and defence, AI and drones.
This is the new Unipolar world where every country is on its own. And with the US and China vying for global dominance, India’s rise will resisted by both.
In semiconductor chips we have created our own RISCV technology in IITM for which we don’t need to keep paying licence fees. Using this we should design our own chips in RISCV to secure ourselves from future sanctions. This should be taken up in a mission mode with funds provided under ISM’s new DLI policy. And open up DLI for all Indian companies including corporates/ERCD exporters, MSME’S and Startup by increasing the size of the funding from the small 30 CR with generous 50 CR to 150 CR. Maybe we can create our own NVIDIA and AMD in the next ten years!
