WITCH companies మీద Joke అదిరింది ...

[andhra_jp]

Techno Colonialism: Can India break free from its technology dependence?

China’s rapid strides in chips, AI, and quantum computing are closing the tech gap with the US, while India risks falling further behind due to limited investment in cutting-edge research and development. Without urgent reforms, India’s reliance on imported technology may deepen, leaving it a 'techno colony' instead of a global innovator

 

Highlights

• China is aggressively promoting RISC-V as its mainstream chip architecture, challenging Intel’s x86 dominance
• China is investing €37 billion to build EUV lithography systems and expand chip fab capabilities
• Despite US sanctions, China has matched or surpassed Western progress in AI models and quantum computing
• India remains far behind in chip design, fabrication, and indigenous AI development
• India’s government has underfunded research, while IT giants prioritize shareholder returns over innovation

Early this month, the Western world learned of the C930 CPU design – based on the open-source RISC V (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) architecture developed by Alibaba’s R&D institute, the Damo Academy. The C930 is being positioned as the ideal high-end server chip and is good for even PCs and autonomous cars. Damo Academy probably chose the RISC V architecture because it is an open-standard instruction set architecture (ISA), the specifications and extensions and standards of which are free and publicly available. RISC V, like most open-source architectures, are collaboratively designed and maintained by the contributing members of the RISC V International.

China’s ambition is to see RISC becoming the new standard for mainstream chips – replacing the CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing) that was introduced by Intel way back in the late 1960s and 1970s, and quickly became the standard for most PCs because of the x86 chips of Intel. Even today, it is the core chip architecture for the bulk of Intel’s chips. According to Reuters, government bodies in China are working to make RISC become the standard chip architecture for computers built in China.

Meanwhile, China is not just intent on creating its mainstream computing chip designs. It is moving equally fast to ensure that it builds self-sufficiency in the other parts of the chip manufacturing ecosystem – chip fabs and even the Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography Systems (EUV) that are currently built only by Netherland-based ASML and which are absolutely essential for building chip fabs capable of manufacturing the latest generation of cutting-edge chips. According to reports, China is investing over Euro 37 billion to gain parity – and even supremacy – in the high-end EUV lithography systems that are being denied to it because of US sanctions. Several Chinese companies are working towards that goal, though a commercially viable EUV lithography machine which can match ASML’s latest generation machines may not be ready for five or six years or even longer.

Meanwhile, in the other area – chip manufacturing – China is making rapid strides. It already had chip fab capabilities to manufacturer older generation of chips – those used in consumer electronics, automobiles and other such products. It has rapidly increased capacities and its main chip fab company – SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation) has doubled its market share. SMIC is even fabricating Huawei’s 7 nm chips, though it is supposed to be less efficient than rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) of Taiwan.

While SMIC still lacks the cutting-edge capabilities of TSMC, China is trying to get around that problem by accessing the most powerful chips through circuitous third-party routes.

At one point, it was thought that China was over a decade behind in chip design and fabs – with the US leading in design and TSMC of Taiwan leading in cutting edge fabs with Samsung of South Korea slightly behind. The US restrictions on ASML, TSMC, Samsung, Nvidia and others to ensure that China could not access the latest chips or chip technologies was supposed to increase the gap further. The problem, as the US has discovered to its chagrin, is that its restrictions have only served to accelerate the Chinese efforts to bridge the gap and the day when China will catch up with its rivals in every part of the chip ecosystem is not far.

Meanwhile, in two other areas of high tech – AI and Quantum – China seems to have not only caught up with the US but is striving to surpass it. The US restrictions were supposed to slow down the Chinese efforts in AI but the release of DeepSeek and Manus have shown that they can match or beat the best that OpenAI, Anthropic or the others can produce currently.

In Quantum Computing too, the race is wide open with Chinese companies and Universities matching and sometimes surpassing the efforts of Google, IBM and others in the race.

If the Cold War era was all about the race between the US (and its allies in Europe) and the erstwhile Soviet Union in Nuclear and Space technology, the current era is primarily a race between China and the US, with the technology arenas being chips, AI and quantum computing.

Unfortunately, India, which may become the third biggest economy after the US and China, seems to be several decades behind – in not just its technology terms but also in its aspirations. Despite regular announcements by politicians and bureaucrats, the hard fact is that we are belatedly getting started in these areas. In chips, we may start fabricating our first older generation chips five years down the line and may not reach the levels of TSMC and others in cutting edge chip fabrication for at least a couple of decades, if that.

In chip design, despite significant capabilities of Indian designers working in global chip design firms and their GCCs in India, we do not have a homegrown company that can design a chip for the latest generation of consumer electronics, forget the kind of chips needed for cutting edge computing.

In AI, we are primarily focused on applications based on LLMs and other models already released. Our indigenous, built from the ground up LLMs are still far away. (However, some progress has been made in taking Open Source LLMs available freely and tweaking them to build models specifically for Indian use).

In Quantum Computing, despite several different projects being pursued, we have yet to demonstrate anything that comes close to what either the US companies or the Chinese have achieved.

The root cause can be traced to both the government’s lack of attention to cutting-edge scientific research as well as the private sector’s lack of ambition and initiative. Over the decades, successive governments have failed to prioritise research in technology despite the fact that there are plenty of bright Indians who are conducting the very same research in the US or other western countries. While China made a determined effort to bring back some of its brightest brains working in the US Universities and Silicon Valley’s biggest corporations and creating an environment where they could do the same research in the country, we have sadly let our best brains go and stay abroad.

Meanwhile our private sector too has coasted along on providing services built around technology developed by global companies instead of creating its own cutting edge products. Our biggest IT services companies with billions of cash in reserves prefer returning money to shareholders than spending on research. The CEO of our biggest and most profitable IT services firm was recently quoted as saying there was no definitive advantage in building our own LLM.

This attitude has made us perpetual borrowers of technology – not inventors. And this is a dangerous and short-sighted approach simply because it keeps the country one or two generations behind those developing the technology – whether it is AI or cutting-edge chips. And makes us a techno colony instead of a techno colonialist.

[andhra_jp]

India needs to move beyond services, turn into a 'product nation': Vaishnaw

Ashwini Vaishnaw made it clear that while India’s services industry will continue to grow, the next big leap must come from product development.

India must move beyond its dominance in IT services and focus on becoming a global product powerhouse, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said, stressing the need for indigenous innovation in both software and hardware.

Vaishnaw made it clear that while India’s services industry will continue to grow, the next big leap must come from product development. “We have been a great service country, now we need to become a product nation. An industry that must continue to grow, but simultaneously we must now also become a product nation.”

 

He laid out the broader vision, stating, “This journey will involve software products as well as hardware products, both categories. And within hardware, analog products and digital networks.”

Innovation, he said, must extend beyond government institutions and involve a much wider ecosystem.“Where only certain government institutions would be developing the technologies, everything has to now give way to a new mindset, where academia, startups, students, and researchers all join together to create new solutions,”the minister said while felicitating winners of the Indian Web Browser Development Challenge (IWBDC) and Chips to Start Up (C2S) Programme event organised by MeitY. He emphasised that talent from across the country must contribute. “…what’s more important is that participation (of startups and innovators) is coming not just from premier institutions, but also from a large number of institutions in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.”

Building India’s chip ecosystem
Vaishnaw underscored the importance of developing India’s own semiconductor ecosystem step by step. “A tech stack will take a few years to build, but every step we take must ensure we reach that level.”

He cited the BLDC (Brushless DC) chip controller as an example of India’s growing capability.
“BLDCs today have become a very important part of electric vehicles, electrical appliances, and many mid-sized devices. If you look at the entire spectrum of chips we need to develop, some will be small-value but large-volume, some mid-value with mid-volume, and some high-value but low-volume. We have to play across the entire spectrum.”

India’s bet on RISC-V

Explaining the government’s focus on RISC-V, an open-source chip design platform, Vaishnaw said, “We decided to move forward more on RISC-V because that’s the real open-source chip design platform. It can be used for designing CPUs, GPUs, and can be taken forward as a sustainable product coming out of our country.”

Pitch for indigenous web browser

Adding to this, S. Krishnan, Secretary, MeitY, stressed the need for India to build its own semiconductor ecosystem and reduce dependence on global supply chains. “We should have started this process years ago, but that acceleration is finally happening now. In the next two to three years, we must see real progress toward having a full-fledged chip designed and developed within India.”

On the need for a secure digital infrastructure, Krishnan highlighted the importance of building India’s own web ecosystem, stating: “The Internet was never designed as a planned, structured infrastructure. It evolved over time in bits and pieces. But today, it is critical infrastructure, and we need to ensure it is resilient and secure, particularly in financial transactions and other key digital interactions.”

“The question is not why we need an Indian web browser 30 years after the first ones were built, but why we don’t already have one that ensures security, resilience, and reliability for Indian users,” he added.