As distance from China grows, India & US work on tech projects – chips to AI

The leaders continue to look forward to the participation of Indian companies in the US Rip and Replace programme, a joint statement issued by India and the US said.

It said that Modi and Biden “expressed satisfaction” over the current status of the investment announcements that were made by American chip companies such as Micron Technology, Microchip Technology, AMD, LAM Research and Applied Materials.

Memory manufacturer Micron has committed an investment of around $825 million to set up a chip packaging plant in Gujarat, as part of India’s $10 billion incentive scheme for chipmaking. The plant will cost a total of $2.75 billion, with the rest of the funds coming from the Centre and the state government.

It is learnt that construction of the facility in Gujarat will commence soon, with the first chips expected to roll out of its assembly lines by the end of next year.

Microchip Technology had earlier announced an investment of $300 million for the next few years to expand its operations in India, which would include opening a new research and development (R&D) facility in Hyderabad. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) will invest up to $400 million in India over the next five years and will set up its biggest design facility in Bengaluru.

Lam Research had announced a proposal to train 60,000 Indian engineers through its Semiverse Solution virtual fabrication platform. And Applied Materials announced a proposed investment of $400 million to establish a collaborative engineering centre in India.

Prime Minister Modi and Biden reaffirmed their commitment to deepen and diversify the India-US Major Defence Partnership through expanded cooperation in new and emerging domains such as space and artificial intelligence (AI).

The PM had recently called for a global framework to ensure the ethical use of AI as he flagged concerns over algorithmic bias and its disruptive impact on society.

PM Modi and Biden also acknowledged the setting-up of two Joint Task Forces focused on collaboration in the field of Open RAN and research and development in 5G/6G technologies. Open RAN is an ongoing shift in mobile network architectures that enables service providers the use of non-proprietary subcomponents from a variety of vendors.

The joint statement said that a 5G Open RAN pilot in a “leading Indian telecom operator” will be undertaken by a US Open RAN manufacturer before field deployment. It did not reveal the name of the Indian telco.

Modi and Biden also welcomed the signing of an agreement between the Bharat 6G Alliance and Next G Alliance, operated by Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, as a first step towards deepening public-private cooperation between vendors and operators.

The Bharat 6G alliance, a public-private sector initiative, was formed after the PM said India would launch the next-generation high speed network by 2030. The alliance, which aims to establish India as a supplier of IP, products and solutions of affordable 5G and 6G and other future telecom solutions has all the three telcos – Jio, Airtel and Vi – as members along with companies like Tech Mahindra.