AI compute systems maker Graphcore announces 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).
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Sudhakar Yerneni, Territory Manager for India at Graphcore
Graphcore’s focus on India reflects the rapid growth of artificial intelligence by both the public and private sectors. In its State of Artificial Intelligence India 2021 report, Analytics India Magazine and TAPMI notes the increasing impact of AI across industrial, retail, healthcare, oil & gas and other sectors central to the Indian economy. The report projects that India’s AI market will grow from $7.8bn in 2021 to $23bn in 2026.
“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.”
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.
About Graphcore
Graphcore was founded in 2016 in Bristol, UK, by Nigel Toon and Simon Knowles, two silicon industry veterans who anticipated the need for a new type of compute technology, specifically designed for artificial intelligence.
The solution they developed, 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.
IPUs power Graphcore’s IPU-POD datacentre systems, which can be built out to large scale configurations of up to 64,000 IPUs offering Exascale compute.
Graphcore’s Poplar software stack enables users to access the power of the IPU, both though its native Poplar Advanced Run Time (PopART) as well as compatibility with popular frameworks including PyTorch and Tensorflow.
Customers include NHN, KT (Korea Telecom), Oxford Man Institute for Quantitative Finance, Tractable, and more.
Academic institutions using the IPU include Stanford University Medical School, UC Berkeley, University de Paris, University of Oxford, University of Bristol, Imperial College London and more.
Graphcore investors include Microsoft, Samsung, Dell, BMW iVentures, Bosch, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, Schroders and Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, as well as leading AI innovators, including Deepmind Co-founder Demis Hassabis and Open AI co-founder Ilya Sutskever.
About Sudhakar Yerneni
Sudhakar Yerneni began his career on the Scientific Computing Group at the Centre for Advanced Computing (CDAC) in Pune. Having worked extensively with high performance computing systems, he joined Hinditron as an Applications Analyst, focusing on Cray Systems.
Sudhakar then moved to Cray where he became India country manager. His more than 13 year tenure extended into Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s acquisition of Cray. Sudhakar holds masters and doctoral degree in Geophysics. He did post-doctoral work at Institut de physique du globe de Paris (IPGP), Paris for a year.
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