Compute, semiconductors & AI policy — part of the eleven-domain research map on this site. This page will expand as new essays publish.
The domestic compute gap
India's installed AI-relevant compute capacity remains a small fraction of demand from domestic labs and enterprises, most of which currently rent capacity from international cloud providers.
The India AI Mission's GPU procurement is a first step, but the harder problem is building a domestic ecosystem — chip design, fabrication, and packaging — rather than just importing more accelerators.
Semiconductor fabrication timeline
Approved fab projects are real commitments, but the timeline from approval to functioning yield at commercial scale typically runs 4-6 years even in mature semiconductor ecosystems — a fact that should temper expectations about when India-fabricated chips actually reach the market.