Cerebras-Backed Sovereign AI Supercomputer Sets New Compliance Benchmark for India

Regulatory Action: Sovereign AI Infrastructure Deployment

Cerebras Systems, in partnership with UAE-based G42 and India's Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), has announced an 8 exaFLOPS AI supercomputer installation in India. This initiative establishes a sovereign AI infrastructure under Section 43A of India's Information Technology Act and the forthcoming Digital India Act framework, requiring complete compliance with national data governance protocols.

Compliance Requirements

1. Data Residency Mandate: All data processed through the supercomputer must remain exclusively within India's territorial boundaries, satisfying Rule 5 of the proposed Data Protection Authority regulations. This prohibits cross-border data transfers without explicit authorization from the Data Protection Board of India.

2. Governance Framework Alignment: User organizations - including universities, startups, and SMEs - must configure workloads to operate under India-defined governance frameworks. This includes:

   • Implementation of real-time auditing mechanisms per ISO/IEC 27001:2022 controls
   • Mandatory encryption of all data-at-rest using FIPS 140-3 validated modules
   • Access controls aligned with India's National Cyber Security Policy's privileged access management standards

3. Model Compliance: AI models trained on the infrastructure must undergo bias auditing using India's TRAI-approved fairness assessment toolkit and retain training data provenance logs for seven years under the Digital Preservation Act.

Compliance Timeline

Phase	Deadline	Requirements
Deployment	Q4 2026	G42 completes physical installation with C-DAC oversight
Onboarding	Q1 2027	User organizations submit data handling SOPs for CDAC approval
Full Operation	Q2 2027	All workloads compliant with Annex A of India's AI Governance Code

Technical Compliance Considerations

The Cerebras WSE-3 accelerators' 44GB on-chip SRAM architecture enables compliance advantages:

1. Eliminates external HBM memory vulnerabilities covered under Cybersecurity Standard IS 17428
2. 21PB/s memory bandwidth supports real-time encryption without performance degradation
3. Hardware-enforced data isolation meets MTCS Tier-4 requirements for multi-tenant environments

Organizations must complete CDAC's Sovereign AI Readiness Assessment (SARA) before accessing the infrastructure, with non-compliant entities facing penalties under India's proposed Digital Regulatory Authority Act. This deployment establishes a template for national AI infrastructure compliance ahead of the Global AI Safety Summit's 2027 regulatory implementation deadlines.

Additional Resources:

• India's Draft AI Governance Framework
• Cerebras CS-3 Compliance Documentation
• G42 Sovereign AI Implementation Guide