AMD has announced a partnership with the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), an incubator at IIT-Bombay, to promote semiconductor start-ups in India. Under this partnership, AMD will provide grants to IIT-B incubated startups working on the development of energy-efficient Spiking Neural Network (SNN) chips. The startups are tasked with devising ways to significantly reduce the energy consumption utilised by conventional neural networks.
AMD’s Commitment to Energy Efficiency
Speaking about the initiative, Jaya Jagadish, Country Head, AMD India, said:
“At AMD, our goal is to reduce energy costs and increase efficiency across all our product lines. We aim to deliver a 30x improvement in energy efficiency for AMD processors and accelerators powering HPC and AI training by 2025. This means we are increasing the energy efficiency of compute nodes at a rate that is significantly faster than the aggregate industry-wide improvement made during the last five years. We continuously work with industry bodies and academia to support initiatives that help drive innovation in this field.”
SINE’s Vision for Semiconductor Start-ups
Shaji Varghese, CEO of SINE- IIT Bombay, emphasised the importance of nurturing semiconductor startups:
“As India looks to execute a comprehensive semiconductor strategy, it is important to nurture, build, and grow startups in this space. As design cycles are long and the cost of entry high in the semiconductor design area, it is SINE’s endeavour to foster and create strong, product-focused, cutting-edge semiconductor design startups by addressing gaps in the industry.”
Read more at: Why This Semiconductor Chip Company Chose India Over China
First Grant Recipient: Numelo Technologies
The first grant was awarded to Numelo Technologies for developing SNN chips using ultralow power quantum tunneling on silicon on insulator (SOI) technology. Prof. Udayan Ganguly, Director of Numelo Tech, explained:
“Our focus to offer extended battery life, enhanced data privacy, and feature a versatile architecture capable of facilitating sound, image, and video recognition, has led us to develop a host of innovations at the technology, circuit and systems architecture, and algorithms/software level.”
He added:
“As a startup in this area, we greatly value interacting with the senior and distinguished engineers at AMD who can mentor the program. We believe this adds far greater value than just the grant itself.”
This partnership is part of AMD’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiative. AMD prioritizes the inclusion of quality education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and promoting scientific research as part of its CSR program.
