NVIDIA and CSIR-CEERI sign MoU to setup Centre of Excellence for Development of Intelligent Systems

The Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute (CEERI) and NVIDIA announced the CEERI- NVIDIA Centre of Excellence (CNCoE). The CNCoE will house a high-throughput artificial intelligence (AI) computing infrastructure that can be leveraged by CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research) Laboratories, in collaboration with public and private organizations and industries across the country, to conduct research and development.

The CNCoE is currently powered by five NVIDIA DGX-1 AI supercomputers, providing a purpose-built deep learning development platform based on NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU accelerators. The system gives researchers access to NVIDIA’s new Tensor Core architecture and a complete deep learning stack with optimized versions of today’s most popular frameworks. The centre also supports a complete design and implementation environment for the development of AI applications on Embedded Platforms.

This centre at CEERI will provide a unique opportunity to the Indian industry to develop novel AI applications by exploiting multi-disciplinary domain knowledge of CSIR’s 4000-plus active scientists spread over 38 dynamic national laboratories covering a wide spectrum of specialisations in science and technology. This unprecedented resource can accelerate the development of AI systems in India in fields from oceanography, geophysics, chemicals, drug design, genomics, healthcare, biotechnology and nanotechnology to mining, aeronautics, instrumentation, agriculture, environmental engineering and information technology. This centre is an outcome of the CSIR’s mission mode project on Intelligent Systems.

Speaking on the MoU signing occasion, Prof. Santanu Chaudhury, Director, CSIR-CEERI said, “This centre will provide a unique platform for developing AI systems to solve some of the critical problems in healthcare, natural resource management, food production, security and transportation by exploiting multi-dimensional knowledge base available with CSIR and other research organizations in the country. The industry can use this facility to develop AI based products supporting the Make in India initiative of the government, This CNCoE has the potential to usher in a culture of AI based innovations in a variety of application domains.”

“The application of AI across sectors is rapidly rising worldwide, and India stands to gain considerably through the right mix of technology, expertise, innovation, and organizational impetus,” said Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, NVIDIA South Asia. “This CNCoE is significant because it brings together NVIDIA’s cutting-edge AI platform with vast industrial scientific research expertise and capability from CSIR-CEERI. This combination will enable researchers and industry across the country to advance their AI systems development.”