Graphcore, an AI compute systems maker from Britain, has announced the opening of its first office in India, under the leadership of former Cray executive Sudhakar Yerneni.
Based in Pune, Sudhakar and a growing team of sales and technical support staff will work with customers and partners across India to drive adoption of Graphcore’s advanced AI systems, which are powered by the company’s Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU).
Graphcore is known for developing the Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU), is a massively parallel processor with 1,472 independent cores capable of running nearly 9,000 independent program threads. The IPU’s Multiple Instruction Multiple Data (MIMD) architecture reflects the requirements of modern AI workloads, unlike GPUs and CPUs. Graphcore’s focus on India reflects the rapid growth of artificial intelligence by both the public and private sectors.
“India is primed to take advantage of the AI revolution. This technology has the power to transform our economy and ensure our continued status as a leading research nation in sectors such as healthcare, finance, energy, agriculture and beyond,” said Sudhakar Yerneni, Territory Manager for India at Graphcore.
“Graphcore’s compute systems are accelerating the pace of AI innovation around the world, with IPU users making breakthroughs not possible on other technologies. We’re excited to see what our customers in India are able to do, given that same advantage,” he added.
One of the first users of Graphcore IPU systems in India is the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). The centre will, in turn, offer remote access to its IPU-POD system to academic and research institutions in India.
“C-DAC exists to advance India’s advanced compute capability, so it is only natural that we would want to explore the many possibilities offered by Graphcore’s IPU. Having taken delivery of IPU-POD system for evaluation, we are now able to make that technology available to researchers and academics across the country. We look forward to seeing the innovative uses that the IPU is put to, both accelerating current workloads and enabling new AI breakthroughs,” said Sanjay Wandhekar, Senior Director & HoD HPC Technologies, CDAC, Pune.
