Yotta Data Services, the data center arm of Mumbai-based real estate major Hiranandani Group, has launched Shakti-Cloud, a Super Computer of 16 Exaflops Artificial Intelligence (AI) computing power. Yotta has partnered with NVIDIA to develop the digital infrastructure to power Shakti-Cloud.
What is Shakti-Cloud?
According to Yotta, “Shakti-Cloud, powered by NVIDIA, is India’s first and truly indigenous AI-HPC Cloud, delivering cutting-edge GPU computing infrastructure, platforms and services. With advanced capabilities, the platform enables the training of large language models (LLMs) and the seamless execution of AI/HPC workloads across the nation, to serve the evolving needs of the Indian, Asian, and global markets.”
A variety of products and services will be available on Shakti-Cloud. These include Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service.
In a statement released, Yotta said that its Shakti-Cloud AI platform will include various PaaS services from day one, including foundational AI models and applications that will help Indian enterprises create powerful AI tools and products.
The need for indigenous Cloud infrastructure in India
The India public cloud services (PCS) market, including infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions, and software-as-a-service (SaaS), revenue totalled US$ 6.2 Billion for 2022, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semi-annual Public Cloud Services Tracker, 2H 2022 (July-December). According to IDC, the overall India public cloud services market is expected to reach US$ 17.8 Billion by 2027, growing at a Compounded Average Growth Rate (CAGR) of 23.4 per cent for 2022-27.
The need to create greater and more robust indigenous Cloud infrastructure is being driven by India’s thriving business and industry who are swiftly adopting increased automation as part of Industry 4.0 and embracing newer technologies like Cloud Computing, AI, Machine Learning (ML) and Internet of Things (IoT).
The demand for a reliable Cloud infrastructure also comes from the growing demand from over a billion people from a tech savvy nation. These are ordinary men, women, and even children and teenagers, who use a variety of digital services every day for purposes ranging from education, banking, e-commerce, accessing public services and government schemes, to even basic every-day things like buying groceries and booking taxis!
India needs to up its Cloud game, and the vibrant Cloud and Data Center industry in India is mindful of this.
Shakti-Cloud represents yet another step being taken by an Indian company in creating highly specialized Cloud architecture to empower an economy that it undergoing a rapid digital transformation. Recently Neev Cloud had launched an AI SuperCloud with the objective of deploying AI Cloud infrastructure including 40,000 GPUs and storage worth US$ 1.5 Billion by 2026.
Yotta’s Partnership with NVIDIA
Yotta shed light on the partnership with NVIDIA, saying, “With this collaboration, Yotta becomes the first NVIDIA Partner Network cloud partner (NCP) in India and joins the global NCP list as an Elite Partner. Further, Yotta is deploying an NVIDIA-powered reference architecture with NVIDIA InfiniBand networking that will allow GPU clusters to deliver great performance at scale for large AI training and inferencing workloads, as well as HPC workloads.”
“We’re excited to embark on this journey, leveraging our scalable cloud and data center infrastructure and NVIDIA’s cutting-edge GPU technology to empower Indian businesses, governments, startups, and researchers with unparalleled GPU-as-a-Service solutions to catalyze advancements in AI, machine learning, gaming, content creation, and scientific research,” said Sunil Gupta, Co-founder & CEO of Yotta, adding, “Yotta aims to accelerate innovation and transform industries across India, delivering the power of NVIDIA GPUs as a service to drive growth, efficiency, and excellence. This collaborative work represents a significant milestone in our journey, and we are excited about the endless possibilities it holds for our customers and India as a whole.”
According to Jay Puri, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations at NVIDIA, “India has emerged as a vibrant hub for technological innovation and digital transformation. Our collaboration with Yotta will help open up access to the specialized infrastructure that makes AI possible at scale and bring GPU capabilities to customers in India, accelerating advancements in AI and fostering innovation across industries.”
What happens next?
Yotta explained its plans saying that it has “already placed a large order for NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, a powerful GPU for AI and HPC workloads, and plans to go operational with 4096 GPUs by January 2024 and 16,384 GPUs by June 2024.” It further said that it “also plans to massively scale up its GPU stable to 32,768 by the end of 2025. This will directly address the huge demand for high-performance GPUs by research labs, enterprises, and startups for HPC and AI workloads.”
Yotta will deploy the first cluster of 16,384 GPUs at NM1, its Navi Mumbai facility that is an Uptime Tier-IV data center. Next, Yotta will deploy a similar-sized cluster at D1, Yotta’s newest and largest hyperscale data center in Greater Noida, near Delhi.
