TrendForce's investigations find that India has become the second largest market for smartphones since 2019. However, the recent worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country has severely impaired India's domestic economy and subsequently dampened various smartphone brands' production volume and sales (sell-in) performances there. TrendForce is therefore revising the forecasted YoY growth in global smartphone production for 2021 from 9.4% down to 8.5%, with a yearly production volume of 1.36 billion units and potential for further decreases going forward.

TrendForce further indicates that the top five smartphone brands (Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo) have either set up assembly plants in India or sought assistance from EMS providers with operations in the country. Hence, the share of made-in-India smartphones has been on the rise over the years, even though the majority of the domestically manufactured devices are still for meeting the demand of the home market. Judging from the current state of Indian smartphone manufacturing, TrendForce expects the second wave to reduce the country's smartphone production volume for 2Q21 and 3Q21 by a total of 12 million units, in turn resulting in a 7.5% YoY decrease in smartphone production in India for the whole year.

The Intel Graphics Twitter account was on fire today, because they posted an update on the development of the Xe graphics processor, mentioning that samples are ready and packed up in quite an interesting package. The processor in question was discovered to be a Xe-HP GPU variant with an estimated die size of 3700 mm², which means we sure are talking about a multi-chip package here. How we concluded that it is the Xe-HP GPU, is by words of Raja Koduri, senior vice president, chief architect, general manager for Architecture, Graphics, and Software at Intel. He made a tweet, which was later deleted, that says this processor is a "baap of all", meaning "big daddy of them all" when translated from Hindi.

Mr. Koduri previously tweeted a photo of the Intel Graphics team at India, which has been working on the same "baap of all" GPU, which suggests this is a Xe-HP chip. It seems that this is not the version of the GPU made for HPC workloads (this is reserved for the Xe-HPC GPU), this model could be a direct competitor to offers like NVIDIA Quadro or AMD Radeon Pro. We can't wait to learn more about Intel's Xe GPUs, so stay tuned. Mr. Koduri has confirmed that this GPU will be used only for Data Centric applications as it is needed to "keep up with the data we are generating". He has also added that the focus for gaming GPUs is to start off with better integrated GPUs and low power chips above that, that could reach millions of users. That will be a good beginning as that will enable software preparation for possible high-performance GPUs in future.

Update May 2: changed "father" to "big daddy", as that's the better translation for "baap".
Update 2, May 3rd: The GPU is confirmed to be a Data Center component.

The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) is India's largest, with two operational 1,000 MWe reactors, and four more under construction, making up a nameplate capacity of 6,000 MWe (electrical output) when fully built. Last Saturday (26th October), unit 2 was taken offline due to an "SG level low" (steam generator level low) error. This event, roughly coinciding with Twitter chatter on an alleged cyber-attack on the plant's computers on Tuesday, spread panic. Twitter threads from cyber-security handles chronicle a possible DTrack malware attack that gained access to the plant's domain controller.

On Tuesday, state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL), which operates KKNPP, put out a press-release denying these rumors. In the press release, plant spokesperson R. Ramdoss states that the plant's computers are isolated from the Internet, and that an external cyberattack is "impossible." He stated that Unit 2 was taken offline due to a mechanical problem in its turbine hall (levels of steam being too low to turn the turbine). It's important to understand that a "Unit" in power plant jargon is a combination of a reactor and its turbine hall. The reactor splits atoms to heat water and make steam, the turbine hall uses this steam to make electricity. A "unit" being offline doesn't necessary mean that its reactor is, but that it's simply not putting out power to the grid. Ramdoss stated that as of Tuesday, units 1 and 2 were putting out 1,000 MWe and 600 MWe, respectively.Update (late-Wednesday, 10/30): NPCIL retracted its earlier statement denying a cyber-attack, and released another press-release, stating that one of its PCs in the plant's administrative block that was exposed to the Internet, was infected by malware, and is being cleaned. This PC is isolated from the plant's internal network that operates the various critical systems. The investigation also revealed that the plant's internal computers are unaffected. The new press-release is pictured above. From the looks of it, the operational error on Saturday is unrelated to the cyber-attack.

India is building a large AI machine learning data-center that can crunch through trillions of financial transactions per hour to process income tax returns of India's billion-strong income tax assessee base. India's Income Tax Department has relied on human tax assessment officers that are randomly selected by a computer to assess tax returned filed by individuals, in an increasingly inefficient system that's prone to both evasion and corruption. India has already been using machine learning since 2017 to fish out cases of tax-evasion for further human scrutiny. The AI now replaces human assessment officers, relegating them up an escalation matrix.

The AI/ML assessment system is a logical next step to two big policy decisions the Indian government has taken in recent years: one of 100% data-localization by foreign entities conducting commerce in India; and getting India's vast population to use electronic payment instruments, away from paper-money, by de-monetizing high-value currency, and replacing it with a scarce supply of newer bank-notes that effectively force people to use electronic instruments. Contributing to these efforts are some of the lowest 4G mobile data prices in the world (as low as $1.50 for 40 GB of 4G LTE data), and low-cost smartphone handsets. It's also free to open a basic bank account with no minimum balance requirements.

The Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2019, on its way to the Indian Parliament for debate and possible legislation, seeks to impose a stunning 10-year imprisonment as penalty for any person or business found buying, selling, holding, or mining crypto-currency in India. It has wording to tell wilful mining apart from "crypto-jacking" (malware that mines crypto on a computer or portable computing device without its user's knowledge). Violations of this Act will also be treated as "cognizable" and "non-bailable," meaning that the accused cannot seek bail, anticipatory or in custody, while their case is being taken up by India's criminal-justice system.

A Cognizable Offense under Indian law, is comparable to a Felony under U.S. law, and some of the most heinous crimes, such as homicide and rape, are classified as these. The Indian Government has reportedly taken this step to clamp down on rampant tax-evasion, "hawala" money transfers (illegal money transfers disconnected from the banking system), and financing of terrorism, drug-trade, and social unrest by foreign NGOs and eco-terrorists. The Bill is expected to have smooth sailing through Parliament as the incumbent political administration enjoys a simple majority in the Lok Sabha (essentially House of Commons); and has a good sway over the Rajya Sabha (Council of States, but essentially House of Lords).

Several years ago, Ineda, a small startup from Hyderabad, India made headlines when they developed custom-design processors for use in wearable devices that were optimized for high energy-efficiency, while still having the ability to read out various sensors or listen to voice commands at the same time. Such improvements help increase battery life on devices that people don't want to recharge every day. Over the years the company has received several million dollars in funding from Samsung, Qualcomm, Imagination Technologies and others.

Looks like this caused enough attention at chip giant Intel, who's trying to come up with a competitive design for a discrete graphics processor, that's able to take on AMD's and NVIDIA's offerings. While Ineda certainly has patents that could come in useful, it looks like Intel is more interested in the company's manpower. With around 100 engineers, the company has a lot of talent, that's experienced in chip design and how to make these chips energy efficient.

AMD today announced that Arka Mediaworks used AMD FirePro W8100 GPUs, AMD FirePro W9100 GPUs and other AMD technologies to bring the motion picture Baahubali: The Beginning to life. Directed by acclaimed film maker S.S. Rajamouli, Baahubali: The Beginning tells the tale of two brothers who find themselves at odds over a kingdom passed down from their father. The first of a two-part dramatic tale, the film features a series of visually exciting adventures brought to life by the power of AMD FirePro professional graphics, enabling artists to create real-time, seamless visual effects.

The highest grossing film ever released by an Indian filmmaker, Baahubali: The Beginning appeared this past summer on 200 screens across the US and more than 4000 screens globally, and the international version is set to debut in a number of global markets and film festivals. Tomorrow, director S.S. Rajamouli, Raja Koduri of AMD and Pete Draper of MakutaFX will host a panel discussion on the making of Baahubali: The Beginning, which will be broadcast live from Los Angeles at 9:50 p.m. PDT. Viewers can watch the broadcast here.

NVIDIA is moving around engineering samples of what it describes as "GM200 A1 graphics processor," in its shipping manifest. The sample was making its way from Taiwan, to Bangalore, India, from where it's likely pushed to the company's facilities in Bangalore and Hyderabad. A1 steppings of NVIDIA chips are usually pre-production, and bound for just a few more rounds of testing, before being upgraded to "A2" and mass-produced. German tech site 3DCenter.org also pulled out some likely specifications from its sources.

To begin with, the GM200, like the GM204, will be built on existing 28 nm silicon fabrication process, as both NVIDIA and AMD appear to have suffered design setbacks due to their common foundry partner, TSMC, not being able to set its next-gen 20 nm node up to speed in time. The GM200 is expected to feature over 4,000 CUDA cores, although the exact number is unknown. It is expected to widen the memory bus to 512-bit. Given the existing process, the GPU will be huge. Over 600 mm² huge. NVIDIA will probably bank on the energy efficiency of its "Maxwell" architecture to cope with thermal loads put out by a chip that big. The GM200-based "GeForce GTX TITAN II" could launch in the first half of 2015.

An engineering sample (ES) of the GeForce GTX 880 was intercepted on its way from a factory in China, to NVIDIA's development center in India, where it will probably undergo testing and further development. The shipping manifest of the courier ferrying NVIDIA's precious package was sniffed out by the Chinese press. NVIDIA was rather descriptive about the ES, in its shipping declaration. Buzzwords include "GM204" and "8 GB GDDR5," hinting at what could two of the most important items on its specs sheet. GM204 is a successor of GK104, and is rumored to feature 3,200 CUDA cores, among other things, including a 256-bit wide memory bus. If NVIDIA is cramming 8 GB onto the card, it must be using some very high density memory chips. The manifest also declares its market value at around 47,000 Indian Rupees. It may convert to US $780, but adding all taxes and local markups, 47,000 INR is usually where $500-ish graphics cards end up in the Indian market. The R9 290X, for example, is going for that much.

Today Intel Corporation announced She Will Connect, a new program that commits to expanding digital literacy skills to young women in developing countries. Intel will begin the initiative in Africa, where the gender gap is the greatest, by aiming to reach 5 million women and reduce the gender gap by 50 percent. To achieve this, Intel will work with a diverse set of partners including global and local NGOs and governments.

Findings from the groundbreaking "Women and the Web" report released by Intel in January revealed concrete data on the enormous Internet gender gap in the developing world and the social and economic benefits of securing Internet access for women. The report issued a call to action for stakeholders to double the number of women and girls online in developing countries in three years. She Will Connect demonstrates Intel's commitment to this action by not only providing digital literacy skills to girls and women, but also by pushing the concept of digital literacy forward through new, innovative and scalable models.

AMD today announced the opening of a new design centre in Hyderabad, featuring world-class lab facilities dedicated to furthering both software and hardware innovations at the heart of AMD's popular Accelerated Processing Units (APUs.) In a ceremony held today, the new design centre was inaugurated by Rory Read, president and chief executive officer at AMD.

"AMD is committed to providing our customers with innovative, tailored technology solutions that empower people and deliver exceptional experiences," said Read. "Our Hyderabad Design Centre will play an important part in that mission as the team works in concert with our other design centers around the world to deliver AMD's next round of innovative products."

At an industry event in Taipei today, Hermann Eul, general manager of Intel's Mobile and Communications Group, unveiled new details about the company's forthcoming Intel Atom processor-based SoC for tablets ("Bay Trail-T") due in market for holiday this year. Based on the new Silvermont microarchitecture, the next generation 22nm Intel technology for tablets and ultra-mobile devices will enable sleek designs with 8 or more hours of battery life2 and weeks of standby, as well as support Android* and Windows 8.1*.

Eul also spoke to recent momentum and announcements around the smartphone business and demonstrated the Intel XMM 7160 multimode 4G LTE solution, now in final interoperability testing (IOT) with Tier 1 service providers across North America, Europe and Asia. "The mobile category is undergoing a tremendous amount of innovation and constant change," said Eul. "As we look at growing it, we continue to invest in and accelerate our efforts across all aspects of mobility with a focus on smartphones, tablets and wireless communications. Intel's unique assets will enable more compelling and differentiated products and experiences, while at the same time helping to shape and lead markets in the future."

NVIDIA today announced that the SAGA system, India's most powerful supercomputer and the holder of the 85 position on the Top500 list released yesterday, is leveraging NVIDIA GPUs to dramatically improve the design and analysis of the delivery vehicles critical to the nation's space program.

Developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), one of the six largest space research agencies in the world, the SAGA supercomputer is used to tackle complex aeronautical problems. Harnessing the power of 640 NVIDIA Tesla GPUs and providing up to 394 teraflops of peak performance, SAGA enables ISRO to accelerate and improve the design and analysis of new and existing satellite launch vehicles by enabling more complex and accurate design simulations.

Silicon Image (NASDAQ: SIMG), a leading provider of wireless and wired HD connectivity solutions, today announced the opening of its newest research and development (R&D) center in Hyderabad, India. Opened on January 27, 2012, the facility located in Hyderabad's technology hub, focuses on the design and development of semiconductor and IP core technologies for implementation in mobile, wireless and consumer electronics (CE) products from manufacturers across the globe.

"The technology innovation and growth occurring in Hyderabad made the location a natural fit for Silicon Image's expanding R&D portfolio," said Rashid Osmani, vice president of worldwide engineering at Silicon Image, Inc. "The expertise of Silicon Image's worldwide engineering team has been strengthened by the addition of the talented engineers in Hyderabad, who we foresee becoming an integral part of new product development."

Microsoft Store's Indian site was compromised, by a hacker group that calls itself "Evil Shadow Team". The site's landing page was briefly taken over by the group, which gained access to the user database. The group then replaced the front-page with its signature, that warned that an "unsafe system will be baptized." The outrageous part of this episode is that the group claimed Microsoft was storing the user database in plain text, which contains usernames, email addresses, and passwords. The site is now offline, the company is probably back in control. Microsoft Store was started in India to discourage piracy and offer genuine copies of Windows, Office, Visual Studio, at the lowest possible prices; Xbox consoles and accessories; and Microsoft hardware (peripherals).

Cavium, Inc. (NASDAQ: CAVM), a leading provider of semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing for networking, communications, and digital home applications, today announced a technology and marketing collaboration with Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) to offer Intel(R) WiDi-based products designed to enable superior wireless display consumer experience. The resulting end-to-end solution will combine Intel(R) WiDi's ease-of-use and innovation with Cavium's super low latency technology and advanced video processing techniques to further enhance Intel(R) WiDi's interactivity and broaden its target applications. As a part of the marketing collaboration, Intel and Cavium will work together to expand and grow the market for wireless display products. A range of OEMs will soon be offering Intel(R) WiDi compatible receivers with Cavium's PureVu(TM) media SoC. Live demonstrations of Cavium's new Intel(R) WiDi receivers are available at Cavium's suite at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, between Jan 10th and 13th.

India's United Progressive Alliance government is mulling censorship of the internet à-la China, to filter out any content that speaks against members of the ruling party. India's multi-partisan democracy is increasingly making use of the web as a medium of political discourse and exchange, something that only works to make voters more informed. Union minister of IT and Telecommunications Kapil Sibal kicked off a storm this week when he announced that he is in talks with representatives of search engines and social networking websites, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and Microsoft to work out a censorship model that filters content that "unfairly maligns" the government. Apart from anti-government content, the government is concerned about hateful or "blasphemous" content, which could disturb communal harmony. "Some of the content which is being carried is blasphemous. This can hurt religious sentiments and it has to be removed," Sibal said.

Google, fresh out of a censorship and GMail espionage tussle with China, stated that it will not remove any content from its search results that are legal, merely on grounds of being "controversial". "We work really hard to both follow the law and also give people as much access to information as we can. So we follow the law when it comes to illegal content. And even where content is legal but breaks our own terms and conditions we take that down too, once we've been notified about it," said Google in a statement. "When content is legal but controversial we don't remove it because people's differing views should be respected, so long as they are legal."

We have brought you the potential perils of the upcoming UEFI Forum-implemented - www.uefi.org - Windows 8 secure boot feature here, here and here. However, it appears that it may not be so 'secure' after all, since there appears to be a surefire way to circumvent it, at least for the moment, while it's in development.

Softpedia has scored an exclusive interview with security researcher Peter Kleissner, who has created various Windows (XP, Server 2003 etc) "bootkits", which allow OS infection at the highest privilege level, giving unrestricted access to the whole of the PC. His latest one, called Stoned Lite, shows how the Windows 8 secure boot process, still in development, can be subverted, as it stands. He is planning to release details of how the code works at the upcoming International Malware Conference (MalCon) - malcon.org - that will take place in India on November 25th. It appears that the real vulnerability exists in the legacy BIOS boot procedure, not in Microsoft's implementation of secure boot, as Kleissner said:

The problem with the legacy startup is that no one verifies the MBR, which makes it the vulnerable point. With UEFI and secure boot, all the boot applications and drivers have to be signed (otherwise they won't be loaded). You can compare it to TPM, although Arie van der Hoeven from Microsoft announced that the secure boot feature is mandatory for OEMs who want to be UEFI certified. It is a good message that security is not an option.

The Government of India today unveiled the much talked about 10 Dollar Tablet PC for students. Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal unveiled the tablet which is initially priced at 1,500 Indian Rupees (US $30), but is expected distributed for 500 Rupees ($10) once manufacturing is streamlined. The device is named Sakshat (meaning "personification" in Sanskrit), and boasts of performance-grade hardware for a device of its class. It has a 10.5-inch multi-touch colour screen, ARM processor, 2 GB of memory, cloud storage, WiFi b/g and 10/100 Ethernet for connectivity with school networks, a highly-customised OS based on the Linux kernel, supporting Adobe Flash for online videos and interactive educational content, and a digital camera.

School curriculum will be distributed to students in an interactive format, as well as drive "e-classrooms" for live-streaming classes from eminent teachers to students from across the country. The device supports OpenOffice.org and open document formats, as well as Adobe PDF, and various multimedia formats. Sakshat was developed by students of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) from various IIT institutes across the country. As part of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology, Sakshat will be backed by a network connecting 18,000 educational institutions and 400 universities.

Intex, a computer peripheral firm from India, recently unveiled a new netbook - the N101-WC1100. The netbook sports an Intel Atom processor paired with up to 2GB RAM. A 160GB hard drive is available for data storage. The netbook has a 10" widescreen display with a 1.3MP webcam. It also features a 7-in-1 card reader. Connectivity is handled by a 802.11b/g Wi-Fi adapter, as well as a Bluetooth adapter.

The Intex N101-WC1100 netbook comes in two flavors: chic red ($403) and elegant black ($395).

Google has launched what is essentially a mobile internet cafe called the Internet Bus, to go around India providing poorer people, experience and education in using the internet. Using a high speed connection via what appears to be satellite, the vehicle has the words "Explore the World of the Internet" along the sides, it has not been cheaply done either. The whole vehicle appears to be a custom build, with large flat screen monitors, custom stands and lots of pretty lights. It has been said by the source, that the amount of people in India who are officially below the poverty line, is nearly as much as the total population of the USA. A video advertisement has also surfaced on YouTube, which you can find here.

In an attempt to empower millions of students across the country, Indian Government agencies have formulated plans to release a laptop at prices that equal that of a trip to a pizzeria in the west. Under a Government-sponsored scheme that runs parallel to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) global initiative, the administration sought to implement this scheme to make the computer up to 10 times more affordable than an OLPC. The Government believes that the hidden costs involved in deploying laptops under the OLPC scheme make it still inaccessible to the larger student population, and that much better hardware could be provided at its cost.

The first thing that comes to your mind would probably be the kind of hardware that would make such a cheap laptop. Earliest data trickling in about the specifications indicates each laptop to have about 2 GB of memory, and support wireless networking. We will attempt to find out more about the hardware in the days to come. The Indian Government has reportedly spent close to US $1.5 billion on developing this concept and researching solutions to make this notebook durable and worthy of deployment to the most remote rural areas, that suffer power-outages and voltage fluctuations. Higher Education Secretary R.P. Agrawal said last week that it would be available within six months. The public education scheme governing the deployment of these laptops was flagged off today, in the southern-Indian city of Tirupati. The laptop will be available to students on a priority basis, and will later reach mass-retail channels in the country.

AMD, a leading global provider of innovative processing solutions in the computing, graphics and consumer electronics markets, today announced the opening of a new silicon design and platform research and development (R&D) facility in Bangalore. As India's role and importance in AMD's global R&D network increases, the number of employees in Bangalore continues to grow, requiring a new facility that will accommodate the current team while also providing room for future growth. Employees will move into the new 52,000 square-foot center upon its completion and continue to focus on development of AMD's most advanced, next-generation processing solutions.