Latest news with #VinodDham
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Business Standard
02-07-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Railways building AI-based integrated security centre, analytics platform
The Ministry of Railways' information technology (IT) backbone — the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) — has undertaken two major initiatives to secure the digital infrastructure of Indian Railways and streamline its information and operations systems. These include an integrated Security Operations Centre for Indian Railways (IRSOC) and an enterprise-wide analytics framework, CRIS said in a report marking its 40th Foundation Day. 'The implementation of IRSOC will significantly enhance the cybersecurity monitoring capabilities of Indian Railways, leading to a substantial reduction in Mean Time to Detect and Mean Time to Respond through the deployment of advanced security solutions such as Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), and Network Detection and Response (NDR),' the report stated. The analytics framework will function by unifying data from various applications into a single Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML)-enabled decision support system. With a data-driven approach leveraging descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, prescriptive, and cognitive analytics, CRIS aims to significantly improve operational efficiency, safety, asset management, and passenger services. Some of the areas where Indian Railways is looking to implement this decision support system include the growth of freight and passenger revenue, increasing market share, and improving profitability. It will also be used to enhance passenger safety and monitor asset performance and inventory levels. Moreover, the ministry has sought the guidance of Vinod Dham — popularly known as the 'Father of the Pentium Chip' — who has advised the Railways to incorporate modern technologies such as blockchain-based management of contracts and freight movement to ensure tamper-proof cargo tracking. He also recommended the adoption of data-driven, dynamic passenger and freight pricing models similar to those used in the aviation sector. Such models would incentivise off-peak travel, optimise seat utilisation, and enable customised freight pricing, Dham said.
The National
29-01-2025
- Business
- The National
AI chips: The nuclear arms race of the 21st century, says Vinod Dham
Future Technology Countries are pushing ahead with AI, seeing it as crucial for strategic dominance The global race for dominance in artificial intelligence is drawing parallels to the nuclear arms race of the 20th century, says Vinod Dham, founder of IndoUS Venture Partners and a pioneer in the semiconductor industry. Speaking on the sidelines of the Raisina Middle East, Mr Dham compared the importance of AI chips to the "nuclear weapons of the 1940s and 1950s". 'If you give away the recipe for building a bomb to everybody, then there'll be chaos in the world,' adding that the US was pursuing an appropriate policy of working in partnership with 'trusted nations'. 'One thing that America has done that will make it very difficult for the rest of the world to replicate. There's some fundamental complex machinery needed to build these chips. And those machines are only being made by the US or companies it controls.' DeepSeek's advancements in AI-driven chip design. Some experts say these advances could disrupt the current dominance of US-based companies like Nvidia in the graphics processing unit market. It has also called into question investment strategies in the booming AI sector, especially as China-based DeepSeek was able to train its large language model with significantly less budget and in less time. But as much as the US would like to keep an advantage in the sector, that will not be possible, he says, as other nations are figuring AI out. In a wide ranging discussion, Mr Dham, who is sometimes referred to as the father of the Pentium chip because of his role in the development of Intel's microprocessor, said the coronavirus pandemic five years ago acted as a springboard for the current AI-driven era. 'During the pandemic, everything shut down, and people had to stay home. Suddenly, there was a need for more computers. A huge demand and peak, which nobody had anticipated. It looked like a shortage, but it was really a shortage because demand went up and not because there was some issue with the supply chain. 'Subsequently, after the pandemic, it became apparent that AI would become crucial for strategic military use, warfare and weaponry. 'That made countries like the US, which is really at the leading edge, realise that maybe we should not have this technology freely given to everybody in the world, restricting those supplies to the so-called trusted nations that they felt it was okay to give it to. And that's really where we are today. Mr Dham also reflected on the foundation story of Pentium chips and how pricing and technology has changed. 'When we were building Pentium, these chips were costing us maybe a couple of hundred dollars, $100, $50 to make. We were selling them for $200, $300, $400. The GPUs today, which are a very different type of a processor, cost $40,000 for just one set of chips. 'They are so expensive that an average person cannot buy them and use them at home. It's a different ballgame than what we played during our time.'
