New Delhi, Sept 23 (KNN) Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Friday that the government is planning a major graphics processing unit (GPU) cluster under the India AI programme.

With this the government aims to boost startups looking to train artificial intelligence models in the country.

Speaking in New Delhi a day before the groundbreaking of a semiconductor packaging and assembling plant by Micron in Gujarat's Sanand, he said the project will serve as a signal to other chip companies and investors to take India more seriously in the global electronics value chain.

A GPU cluster is a group of computers with GPUs on each node to train neural networks for image and video processing.

The minister said that the government is looking to back startups and foreign companies who seek to create domestic intellectual property in chip design for AI applications under the Rs 1,100- 1,200 crore design-linked incentive scheme.

"Today's discussion about AI is almost always about applications like ChatGPT. Our mission is real-world AI use cases. We are looking at health, governance, education and creating AI-specific integrated circuits for those applications," he said.

Computer storage chip maker Micron will set up its semiconductor assembly and test plant in Gujarat entailing a total investment of USD 2.75 billion (around Rs 22,540 crore), the company said on June 22.

The total cost of the plant comprises USD 825 million (around Rs 6,760 crore) from Micron and the rest from the government in two phases, according to a company statement.

Under the scheme, Micron will receive 50 percent fiscal support for the total project cost from the central government and incentives representing 20 percent of the total project cost from the state of Gujarat.   (KNN Bureau)