India Gearing Up for Big Supercomputing Expansion

[Himanshu]

By Michael Feldman | 2017

A number of news outlets in India are reporting the government is close to deploying six new supercomputers, two of which will deliver a peak performance of two petaflops.

According to a report in the Hindustan Times, the six new systems are part of the initial phase of a three-phase project that eventually result in the deployment of 50 supercomputers across the country. The Indian government has allocated Rs 4,500 crore (close to 700 million USD) for the project, which was approved in March 2016. The effort is being managed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), an R&D institution under India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

The six initial supercomputers will be installed at four technology centers: Banaras Hindu University, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Hyderabad -- Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, and Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Of these first machines, two of them will have a peak performance of two petaflops, while the remainder will be the around 500 teraflops.

One of the principle goals of the three-phase project is to develop a domestic capacity to design and manufacture supercomputers – part of the country’s “Made in India” initiative. In the first phase, three of the supercomputers will be imported, while the remaining three will be based on imported parts, but assembled in the country. In the project’s second phase, compute nodes, switches and other network componentry will be designed and manufactured domestically. In the final phase of the project, “almost the entire system” will be built in India.

The project is scheduled to take place over a period of seven years.

India Planning to Deploy 10-Petaflop Supercomputer
India is getting ready to field the country’s most powerful supercomputer to date. According to a report in The Hindu, the 10-petaflop system will be installed this June, returning India to the upper echelons of supercomputing.

The machine is to be jointly hosted by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting at Noida in Uttar Pradesh. Not surprisingly, the new system will be used mostly for weather modeling, but according to the report, also for non-meteorological research such as protein folding.

The Hindu quotes Madhavan Rajeevan, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, who said the bid to select the vendor that will build the machine is ready to go, and they hope to have the computer in place by June. The Indian government has allocated 400 crore or about $60 million for the project.

SahasraT, Supercomputer Education and Research Centre

The most powerful Indian supercomputer today is SahasraT, a 1.2 petaflop (peak) system that can run Linpack at 901 teraflops. SahasraT is a Cray XC40 installed at the Supercomputer Education and Research Centre, as part of the Indian Institute of Science. SahasraT is currently ranked as number 133 on the TOP500, and is one of just four Indian supercomputers on the current list. From 2012 to 2015, India has made a more substantial showing, claiming between 9 and 12 such systems.

The new machine may get India back into the top 10, but it’s not a given. The current 10th-ranked system on the TOP500 list is Trinity, an 11-petaflop (peak) supercomputer that eked out 8.1 teraflops on Linpack. Even if no new top systems show up, the Indian machine would have to have a very efficient Linpack run to make it a top 10 machine.

India Gearing Up for Big Supercomputing Expansion | TOP500 Supercomputer Sites

 

[Himanshu]

India’s first multi-petaflop supercomputer, to improve monsoon and air quality forecast

PUNE: India may get a better forecast of rainfall from the next monsoon season, while the number of farmers who receive weather information from IMD may increase by about 80% in next two years thanks to Pratyush, India's first multi-petaflops supercomputer set up at a cost of Rs 450 crore.

Union Minister of Earth Sciences Dr. Harsh Vardhan dedicated India's fastest and first multi-petaflops supercomputer to the nation on Monday at Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM). The supercomputer named as 'Pratyush' meaning the Sun, will be a national facility for improving weather and climate forecasts and services under the umbrella of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Govt. of India.

"The number of farmers who receive weather information through text messages is expected to increase from 24 million at present to 45 million by 2019," said Harsh Vardhan.

MoES has been trying to scale down the weather forecast, which is presently given at district level, to block level. "With the help of Pratyush, blolck level forecast will be possible in another one year. The forecast of next monsoon will also get better," said Harsh Vardhan.

Presently, with around 1.0 PF peak capacity, India's ranking in HPC is much below the HPC rankings of major countries that generate weather/climate forecasts. With the augmentation of this new 'Pratyush" high performance computing (HPC) facility of 6.8 Peta Flops (PF), India's ranking will move from the 368 th position to around the top 30 in the Top500 list of HPC facilities in the world.

India will also be placed at the 4 th position after Japan, UK and USA for dedicated HPC resources for weather/climate community, from its 7th position at present.

The new HPC of 6.8 PF computational power is installed at two MoES Institutes. 4.0 Peta Flops HPC facility at IITM, Pune and 2.8 Peta Flops facility at NCMRWF, Noida, which will be inaugurated next week.

The minister claimed that the increased HPC capacity has helped to provide reliable forecast services like better prediction of seasonal, extended range short and media range predictions of monsoon, prediction cyclones like "Phailin", "HudHud", and the recent one "Ockhi" with adequate lead time, Tsunami warnings, extreme events like Uttrakhand floods, Kashmir floods and Mumbai/Gujarat extreme rainfall events of previous year.

 

[Himanshu]

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today inaugurated ‘Param Shivay’ Supercomputer of 833 teraflop capacity built at the cost of Rs 32.5 crore under the National Super Computing Mission at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Banaras Hindu University (BHU). A postal stamp and postal stamp album were also released by the PM on the centenary year of the institute.

Scientists, teachers and research students, government research laboratories in adjacent engineering colleges to IIT-BHU can avail benefits of the projects. About 40 per cent computer power will be used by the students of Navodaya Vidyalaya.

The problems of common man related to relevant social issues such as irrigation schemes, traffic management, health, an affordable drug will also be taken care of with this supercomputer centre, claims the institute.

The ‘Param Shivay’ will include 1 peta byte secondary storage and appropriate open source system and application software suite using 223 processor nodes, 384 GB per node DDR4 RAM, parallel file system, including CPU and GPU.

India’s first supercomputer called PARAM 8000 was launched in 1991.

At present, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology has Pratyush, National Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting has Mihir and IISc has SERC-Cray as supercomputers in India.

PM Modi Inaugurates Supercomputer ‘Param Shivay’ At IIT-BHU

 

[Gautam]

C-DAC is first off the block to make desi chip
Electronics research organisation is also at work on building a supercomputer by 2022
Priyanka Sangani | ETtech | April 10, 2019, 06:46 IST

Image for representation only

Premier electronics research organisation, the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), is designing exascale computing systems as well as India's first chip, in a bid to develop homegrown solutions for a range of applications.

"We're working towards having a viable architecture for exascale computing ready by 2022. This would bring in a lot of disruptive technology," Hemant Darbari, director general, C-DAC told ET.

Exascale computing refers to computing systems with a capability of one exaflops, or one billion billion calculations per second. In comparison, the fastest supercomputer in the world has a computing power of 143.5 petaflops, or one thousand million million calculations per second.

C-DAC is also working on a range of processors for image processing and smart energy meters, apart from developing India's first 64-bit quad-core microprocessor.

It is also designing systems and applications in five core areas, including artificial intelligence, language computing, internet of everything (a concept where any digital device is connected to the internet), and secure computing.

In language computing, C-DAC will soon launch a speech-to-speech translation project that will translate English into other Indian languages. Over time, this will be expanded to translations within Indian languages.

Over the last few months, C-DAC has also developed a range of applications that use emerging technologies, including blockchain.

"We have created our own distributed ledger technology which we're currently using for a land records project in Andhra Pradesh. This would also be useful in defence and strategic applications where security is important," said Darbari.

Another project deals with the use of wireless sensors to send personalised tips such as information on pests, plant disease and irrigation schedules, to farmers.

C-DAC is first off the block to make desi chip - ETtech

 

[_Anonymous_]

C-DAC is first off the block to make desi chip
Electronics research organisation is also at work on building a supercomputer by 2022
Priyanka Sangani | ETtech | April 10, 2019, 06:46 IST

Image for representation only

Premier electronics research organisation, the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), is designing exascale computing systems as well as India's first chip, in a bid to develop homegrown solutions for a range of applications.

"We're working towards having a viable architecture for exascale computing ready by 2022. This would bring in a lot of disruptive technology," Hemant Darbari, director general, C-DAC told ET.

Exascale computing refers to computing systems with a capability of one exaflops, or one billion billion calculations per second. In comparison, the fastest supercomputer in the world has a computing power of 143.5 petaflops, or one thousand million million calculations per second.

C-DAC is also working on a range of processors for image processing and smart energy meters, apart from developing India's first 64-bit quad-core microprocessor.

It is also designing systems and applications in five core areas, including artificial intelligence, language computing, internet of everything (a concept where any digital device is connected to the internet), and secure computing.

In language computing, C-DAC will soon launch a speech-to-speech translation project that will translate English into other Indian languages. Over time, this will be expanded to translations within Indian languages.

Over the last few months, C-DAC has also developed a range of applications that use emerging technologies, including blockchain.

"We have created our own distributed ledger technology which we're currently using for a land records project in Andhra Pradesh. This would also be useful in defence and strategic applications where security is important," said Darbari.

Another project deals with the use of wireless sensors to send personalised tips such as information on pests, plant disease and irrigation schedules, to farmers.

C-DAC is first off the block to make desi chip - ETtech

Your inputs on the chip design & supercomputer @Bali78 ; @Bharath ; @Nilgiri

 

[Bali78]

Your inputs on the chip design & supercomputer @Bali78 ; @Bharath ; @Nilgiri

Too little, too late Bro. C-DAC should concentrate on creating more powerful super computers using OTS processors.

 

[_Anonymous_]

Your views @Bali78 . If you can be more elaborate in your views, perhaps. It'd be greatly appreciated.

 

[Gautam]

MediaTek Launches India-specific SoC, Vows Smartphone Design Support

• 15 November 2017
• Majeed Ahmad Kamran, EE Times India

Indian handset manufacturers are striving to move beyond the ODM model, and MediaTek and Qualcomm are here to help them create original smartphone designs.

The smartphone design is quickly becoming a test case for the "Make in India" push and MediaTek Inc. wants to make the best of it. The Hsinchu, Taiwan–based chipmaker, which reshaped China's mobile landscape by providing makers with handset-specific design support, is now eying India as its next mega design win.

India, the world's fourth-largest smartphone market, is at crossroads. The traders that started as distributors of Nokia and Samsung handsets eventually became mobile phone manufacturers in their own right by the early 2010s.

But they were actually white-labeling handsets created by the Chinese ODMs, and all these feature phones looked a lot similar. And the lack of original design work eventually caught up with Indian handset brands such as Karbonn, Lava, and Micromax when Chinese OEMs like Gionee, Huawei, Oppo, and Xiaomi began sweeping the smartphone market. Enter MediaTek.

The Taiwanese smartphone chipmaker is now showcasing its MT6739 smartphone chipset in India. Finbarr Moynihan, general manager of International Corporate Sales at MediaTek, calls it an India-specific SoC as it caters to the entry-level 4G smartphone market.

Will MediaTek be able to replicate its China success story in India?

According to Carter L. Horney, Associate Analyst at Forward Concepts, MT6739 matches the capabilities of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 425 and Snapdragon 450 chipsets released in 2016 and 2017, respectively. "What's unique about MediaTek's MT6739 chipset is support for dual SIM and VoLTE, two 4G features that are highly relevant to the Indian smartphone market."

And MediaTek is trying to spice up the demand for its LTE Cat 4 chipset by offering help on the product engineering side that includes integration of key components as well as planning and execution of smartphone design projects.

The Taiwanese silicon firm's opening of a new design center in Bangalore is accompanied with a two-and-a-half-month smartphone design training program for 50 Indian professionals having at least five years of experience in electronics-related R&D.

MediaTek vs. Qualcomm Qualcomm is another contender for taking Indian handset manufacturers beyond the ODM model. The San Diego, California–based semiconductor supplier is funding its Innovation Labs in Hyderabad and Bangalore to offer smartphone-related design training as part of the $8.5 million Qualcomm Design in India Program (QDIP).

And when it comes to helping out smartphone OEMs on design work, Horney says that Qualcomm is better positioned than MediaTek. "Qualcomm has a lead in fingerprint sensor through glass, and that could make a huge difference in the Indian smartphone market," he added.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 450 smartphone processor offers significant improvements on GPU and charging fronts.

Horney also pointed toward MediaTek's weak GPU technology, which impacts gaming, a highly popular smartphone application in India. Next, he added, is time to charge, a huge consumer consideration, where MediaTek lags behind Qualcomm. "And dual displays are possible with Qualcomm, not MediaTek."

Smartphones are now being commoditized, and handset design is largely becoming a specification game. But it's still a strategic market in India amid a large user volume and greater potential for first-time smartphone buyers.

So India has been gradually building production capacity for handsets, and it has also managed to acquire supply chain expertise over the years. However, the capability for original design work and mobile handset system integration has been a key missing link.

A helping hand from the two largest smartphone chipmakers—MediaTek and Qualcomm—could reinvigorate Indian handset makers' foray into differentiated smartphone design. And it will bring a new set of opportunities for hardware and software engineers in India. * Majeed Ahmad is former editor-in-chief of EE Times Asia.*

https://www.eetindia.co.in/news/article/MediaTek_Launches_India-specific_SoC

 

[Gautam]

Velankani and STMicroelectronics Collaborate on Smart Meters for 'Make in India' Program

• 14 March 2018
• Velankani, STMicroelectronics

Effort highlights the development of smart energy meters based on STCOMET platform

Bengaluru and Noida, India, March 6, 2018 – Velankani Electronics Pvt. Ltd. (VEPL), an electronics manufacturing enterprise that focuses on the design and manufacture of products that qualify under India’s Government-led “Make in India” program, has collaborated with STMicroelectronics, a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications, in the design and development of Velankani’s Prysm® smart meters for the India market.

The technology collaboration brings together ST’s leading-edge components, including the STCOMET smart-meter System-on-Chip, and the Company’s expertise in smart-meter design and deployment with Velankani’s industrial manufacturing talents and vision to lead India toward an advanced metering infrastructure. The STCOMET-based G3-PLC™ smart meters integrate all key smart-meter functions in a single chip to address multiple smart-grid market requirements. The meters connect Consumers and their Utility supplier to provide real-time metering and data analysis.

“With strong business and government support and investment, India is vigorously building smart cities and by working closely with Velankani, we have embedded all the functions required to create high-performance electricity meters for smart-grid applications,” said Francesco Muggeri, Head of the Power Discrete & Sub Analog Product Group for Asia Pacific, STMicroelectronics. “Velankani’s smart meters build on the market-proven STCOMET SoC and its multi-core architecture to meet India’s demand for reliable leading-edge technology.”

"Technology is a driving force for change and development in India, and we are committed to this vision of making technology accessible to all. Velankani Group is a single-source provider of a unified technology and content platform that provides easy access to affordable technology for all segments of society,” said Kiron Shah, Managing Director, Velankani Group. “Velankani's collaboration with STMicroelectronics will showcase how technology can really change and enable smart environments that will lead to faster development in India."

“ST is bringing positive contributions to people’s lives by developing innovative microelectronics technologies, products, and solutions. Smart Homes and Cities are key pillars of ST’s strategy that is well aligned with India’s mission to develop smart cities around the country,” added Allan Lagasca, Application Director System Engineering and Strategic Programs Business Development, PDSA, Greater China, South Asia, India and Korea (APAC Region), STMicroelectronics.

To learn more about ST’s state-of-the-art innovative solutions for Smart City applications and a special showcase of Velankani’s Prysm® smart meters, visit ST’s Booth L22 & L23 at India Smart Grid Week 2018, March 6-8, Manekshaw Centre, Dhaula Kuan, New Delhi, India.

https://www.eetindia.co.in/news/art...ate-on-smart-meters-for-make-in-india-program

 

[Gautam]

India's InCore Adds to RISC-V and AI

• 8 August 2018
• Rick Merritt

Licensing cores and design services on agenda for startup

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A startup in India announced ambitious plans to design and license RISC-V-based processor cores as well as deep-learning accelerators and SoC design tools. InCore Semiconductors will make its first cores available before the end of the year.

The effort marks a small but significant addition to the RISC-V ecosystem. It shows that the initiative is gaining global interest for its open-source instruction set architecture as an alternative to offerings from Arm and other traditional suppliers.

InCore spun out of the Shakti processor research team at IIT-Madras, leveraging research in machine learning at its Robert Bosch AI Centre. So far, it is funding itself with revenues from providing commercial support for Shakti cores, according to G. S. Madhusudan, chief executive of InCore and a principal scientist at IIT-Madras.

The startup is developing two families of in-order cores that target edge systems ranging from ultra-low-power IoT to desktops.

At the low end, its E-class cores use three-stage pipelines and come in 32- and 64-bit versions supporting a subset of the RISC-V ISA. They will run at less than 200 MHz and come with ports of FreeRTOS, targeting Arm’s M-class cores.

The high-end, 64-bit C-class cores use a five-stage pipeline and support the full RISC-V ISA and virtualization. They target speeds up to 800 MHz but can be customized to run up to 2 GHz and issue two instructions per cycle.

The C-class cores will support a level-four secure version of Linux and target Arm’s A35/A55 cores. The startup also plans a set of extensions for the C-class cores that enable fault-tolerant functions for automotive and other markets.

Versions of both E and C cores will be available before the end of the year. Superscalar and dual-issue capabilities will be available before April.

​

A systolic array is one of the first blocks on the way to an AI accelerator core. (Image: InCore)


AI plan starts with accelerator blocks
To accelerate deep learning in embedded systems, InCore will supply before the end of the year blocks to integrate with its cores. The so-called Axon series products are the start of a plan to design accelerator cores for machine learning that will include support for real-time guarantees.

One block will provide a basic systolic array using a data flow architecture and supporting frameworks such as Caffe and TensorFlow. Another offers cache optimizations to enable skipping redundant operations in sparse data sets by using a special address table and register file.

A separate Aegis series will deliver hardware-based security functions such as a tagged architecture due by next June to prevent common memory attacks. However, it requires software support and is an extension outside of the RISC-V specification.

Separately, InCore aims to release SoC design tools for its cores, preliminary versions of which are already available as open-source code. The tools aim to ease the job of integrating and testing the startup’s cores and blocks with each other using standard interfaces such as AXI and TileLink.

InCore aims to make money through a combination of licensing its intellectual property and providing design services. To date, it has worked mainly with HCL Technologies (Noida, India) to engage foundries. Intel taped out an IIT-Madras Shakti core on its 22-nm node with back-end design by HCL.

“We can go from concept to tape-out on any fab, even at 7-nm nodes,” said Madhusudan in an email exchange. “We like the Intel 22-nm process for IoT and sub-GHz-class devices.”

So far, InCore is not planning a venture investment round. “We can even go GA on one or two cores with our current revenue, but VCs are interested,” said Madhusudan. “Long term, there is enough strategic business in India for us, and we are the only CPU IP player around.”

The company’s chief technologist laid out the startup’s product plans at a RISC-V conference recently in Chennai, India, where InCore is based.

— Rick Merritt, Silicon Valley Bureau Chief, EE Times

https://www.eetindia.co.in/news/article/18080802-indias-incore-adds-to-risc-v-and-ai

 

[Gautam]

Signalchip designs India’s first indigenously designed chip

• 11 March 2019
• Sufia Tippu

Bengaluru-based fab-less semiconductor start-up Signalchip, after eight years of relentless R&D work and a never-say-die attitude, has unveiled India’s first semiconductor chip for 4G/LTE and 5G NR (New Radio) modems.

Co-founded by Himamshu Khasnis and Rajesh Mundhada, Signalchip has designed what is said to be India’s first LTE chip with the 4G/LTE modem, LTE baseband modem, LTE transceiver and 5G transceiver under the Agumbe chipset family, all of which will support all LTE/5G-NR bands up to 6GHz. These chips put India into an elite group of countries that own this widely used technology.

At the recent launch of the event, Signalchip unveiled four chips:

• SCBM3412: a single chip 4G/LTE modem including the baseband and transceiver sections in a single device
• SCBM3404: a single chip 4X4 LTE baseband modem
• SCRF3402: a 2X2 transceiver for LTE
• SCRF4502: a 2X2 transceiver for 5G NR standards

(Source: Signalchip)

These chips also support positioning using India’s own satellite navigation system, NAVIC. Incidentally, the Agumbe series builds up on SCRF1401 - India’s first RF transceiver chip for high performance wireless standards like 3G/4G and Wi-Fi, created by Signalchip in 2015.

The combined multi-standard system-on-chip (SoC) can serve as a base station chipset for a wide range of form factors from low-cost indoor small cells to high performance base stations. These are optimally designed to support evolving network architectures like Open RAN/CRAN with flexible interface configurations.

Indian Telecom Secretary, Aruna Sundararajan while congratulating the 40-member strong Signalchip team for designing India's first indigenous semiconductor chips for 4G/LTE and 5G NR said, “This is a proud moment for India's digital communications industry. India aspires to take a leadership role in developing inclusive 5G technologies for economic self-sufficiency and strategic needs of the country. These chips are a significant step in this direction as they have the potential to cater to the growing digital connectivity needs of the next 5 billion users, by enabling high-performance mobile networks at lower cost.”

Signalchip founder and CEO, Himamshu Khasnis pointed out that currently in India, all devices and infrastructure, whether imported or domestically manufactured, use imported silicon chips. “Silicon chip design is a very challenging activity requiring high-cost R&D, deep know-how and mastery of multiple complex domains. Hence, this technology is not available in most countries. Given that wireless communication is central to almost all economic, strategic and domestic activities happening today, the ability to indigenously design and develop silicon chips is vital for the security and prosperity of our country”.

“Semiconductor is at the heart of any technology. Indian companies have no ownership at the silicon core level. Building competencies in the semiconductor are key to India’s technology roadmap,” he added.

Stanford University professor AJ Paulraj who is also heading the high-level 5G Forum also recently said that only indigenous technology could ward off security threats, and network gear from Nokia and Ericsson could be equally unsafe.

Having mentored and funded Signalchip, Zoho Founder and CEO, Sridhar Vembu said “India has always had the talent required to build any technology. We just need to be patient and have enough capital to put it all together. It's a long-term commitment. Through smart planning and relentless efforts, Signalchip has acquired the capability required to create any complex and globally competitive silicon chip, indigenously from India. I truly appreciate the patience and diligence the Signalchip team has shown to build this chip. Only long-term R&D can make Indian companies globally competitive”.

The company has 240 large and small IP modules and it has filed 24 patents but, however, feels that commercialisation of new products would be a challenging aspect.

— Sufia Tippu is a freelance tech journalist based in India contributing to EE Times India.

https://www.eetindia.co.in/news/article/Signalchip-designs-Indias-first-indigenously-designed-chip

 

[Gautam]

India’s Microcontroller Trends

• 23 April 2019
• Partha

India’s semiconductor market share is hardly representative of its size, both in terms of geography and in its tag as being a technology design services region

India’s semiconductor market share is hardly representative of its size, both in terms of geography and in its tag as being a technology design services region. However, in the last 7-8 years the demand for semiconductor chips in the Indian market has grown fast, especially when compared to the global average.

Mobile phone manufacturers are now importing chips and components as well as doing basic printed circuit board assembly in India, instead of assembling knocked down parts of mobile phones. Semiconductor imports for mobile phone devices alone is estimated to reach US$ 10+ billion in 2020. Microcontroller chips find usage in the smartphone sensor hub. It’s a growing market when you add wearables to smart phones, since wearables use a lot more microcontroller chips. However, the complete mobile phone design and manufacturing process is still yet to happen in a big way, but manufacturing is starting to take off.

Amid the high level of design activity happening in India in terms of services, there is a severe lack of full-fledged product design and manufacturing companies in India, with the scale hardly matching any Asian electronics manufacturing economies. Due to this, the overall semiconductor market as well as microcontroller market in India is small in size, especially in terms of local design enabled market growth. The Indian microcontroller market is estimated to be around US$ 750 million to 1billion, in a local semiconductor market worth around US$ 18-20 billion in 2019.

There is a well-established automotive manufacturing base in India, and it is estimated to be 2nd biggest market for semiconductors and microcontroller chips. At present, the two-wheeler market is equally interesting and attractive when compared to the car and other vehicle markets. The electrical vehicle market in India has seen growth with a good number of successful models of electric cars, bikes and rickshaws already on road. At the design stage, a lot of activities are under progress around the electric vehicle development of heavy vehicles, cars and two wheelers. Instrument clusters is an area where a good amount of local design and manufacturing can be seen. In other areas of critical automotive electronics, there are very few local companies to compete with global OEMs.

The second-biggest market for microcontrollers used to be industrial and power electronics. Due to regular power outages both in urban and rural areas, the UPS market is to be one of the major markets for microcontrollers in the next few decades. However, in the last 7-8 years, there have been fewer power cuts which hindered growth in the UPS market. The second-biggest market in the industrial segment is process control and manufacturing automation. However, most companies are importing embedded boards instead of designing and manufacturing them locally. Electronic ID cards and supporting systems, Ticket vending machines, digital weighing scales, kiosks, public displays are also part of this market.

Both, consumer IoT and industrial IoT has emerged as the third biggest market in India. In this segment a lot of start-ups have launched IoT based electronic systems for a range of applications which were previously unthought-of, such as agriculture, smart cities and other such areas.

Defence electronics and aerospace remains a stable market for microcontrollers in India. This market has consistently grown for a very long time. The major customers here have traditionally been public sector enterprises. Recently the private sector has also been playing an active role in the Indian defence and aerospace industry. The government procures a lot of electronic systems for e-governance, which is another big market for microcontrollers.

Does any Indian company make locally designed MCU chips? The answer is both yes and no. The answer can be yes, because through an academic initiative from IIT Madras, a team of engineers have built a processor family named ‘SHAKTI’ using open source RISC-V. They have designed and fabricated the chips locally. The answer can also be no, since there is not yet a company or distributor exclusively selling chips and boards of these SHAKTI processors developed by IIT madras.

https://www.eetindia.co.in/news/article/Indias-Microcontroller-Trends

 

[Gautam]

Ajit, Agumbe, Pruthvi and Shakti; India-made Chips

• 26 April 2019
• Partha

We take a look at India's growing VSLI chip industry, as it moves from service based to product development.

If you move around Marathhalli, Mahadevpura, Brookfield, Whitefield Road, and Kadubeesanahalli areas of Bangalore, you'll end up finding close to a hundred small to medium-sized VLSI design services companies. These companies provide VLSI design engineers on a contract basis to leading semiconductor vendors. Development offices of leading global chip makers and silicon IP developers are also concentrated in the aforementioned areas. But it is tough to find an India based VLSI company who design and sell their own chips, except for the two companies; Signalchip and Saankhya Labs. Signalchip and Saankhya Labs have developed market-relevant cutting-edge SoC chips in the advanced 5G wireless communication areas.

Saankhya developed SoC chips named Pruthvi-3 series, designed using patented Software Defined Radio (SDR) architecture. The new SL-30xx and SL-40xx chips supporting worldwide broadcast communication standards can be used in multiple communication products including mobile devices, broadcast TV, satellite communications, ADAS systems and military communications. Saankhya developed a patented 5G broadcasting solution, mainly for video streaming to mobiles, where the mobile phones can utilize freed up bandwidth for other applications including voice. These chips utilize the TV transmission dedicated white-space frequency for convergence of broadcast and broadband services. These chips are fabricated by Samsung fab in South Korea.

Saankhya is expecting massive business growth from these new chips, where it is looking at a 50% year over year revenue growth and expecting sales revenue around Rupees 100 Crores in this financial year.

Saankhya is founded by Parag Naik, Vishwakumara Kayargadde and Hemant Mallapur. All these founders are engineers at their core with vast experience in designing chips, software, and systems.

Another equally interesting chip-family code-named Agumbe is from Signalchip, a company invested and mentored by Dr Sridhar Vembu, cofounder of Zoho Corporation.

The Agumbe product line includes:

1. SCBM3412: Single chip 4G/LTE modem featuring 2×2 MIMO and TDD/FDD support
2. SCBM3404: Single chip 4x4 MIMO LTE Baseband Platform featuring 4x4 MIMO and TDD/FDD support
3. SCRF3402: Single chip 2X2 transceiver for LTE supporting 350MHz-6GHz and up to 40MHz RF bandwidth
4. SCRF4502: Single chip 2X2 transceiver for 5G NR standards supporting 350MHz-6GHz and up to 100MHz RF bandwidth

These chips can be used to design base stations of different form factors covering small cells to high-power base stations. Agumbe chips support network architectures such as OpenRAN/CRAN with flexible interface configurations. Agumbe is also the name of a hill station in the Malnad region of Karnataka which receives the highest rainfall.

These SoC devices were developed with eight years of research and development, demanding high levels of patience and diligence. This shows quite a long period of consistent research-effort is required to develop globally competitive products, when capital investment needs to be flown without having any revenue for many years.

Himamshu Khasnis, Rajesh Mundhada, and Kandasamy Shanmugam are the co-founders of Signalchip.

Adding to these two made-in-India chips, there are two more initiatives taking birth in Indian Institute of Technologies (IITs) resulting in the development of two more chip families for different applications.

The open source RISC V architecture based processors were developed by a group of students and faculty from IIT Madras, Chennai. These processors are named as SHAKTI processors. They were developed with the aim to save the IP cost and also save the processor-user from using any black box technologies from proprietary silicon IP providers. The source code of all the components of Shakti processors is open, free to use and modify. The users can circulate the source code without having to sign any agreements. Prof. V Kamakoti from the Department of computer science and engineering of IIT Madras is the key person behind this initiative.

In another similar effort, the researchers from IIT Bombay, Mumbai have developed and fabricated a microprocessor named AJIT. The nine-member team headed by Prof. Madhav Desai have collectively developed this chip. A company named Powai Labs funded by MeitY is to own and market this microprocessor chip. The processor architecture and other details of Ajit were not disclosed openly by the developers and the company. Ajit is expected to cost less than two dollars or even less when it is manufactured on large-scale.

All this indicates that India’s VLSI chip design industry is emerging from a services business to product development.

https://www.eetindia.co.in/news/article/Ajit-Agumbe-Pruthvi-and-Shakti-India-made-chips

 

[Gautam]

The IIT Madras start up InCore, involved in Project Shakti(not the ASAT), is designing two types of processors : E-class and C-class. Both of which are based on the RISC-V ISA architechture. They are actually going to make a family of 6 processors out of which only two of them are ready. Here check out their website. (Shakti Processor Program)
Here is the Shakti E-class processor specifications :

And here is the Shakti C class processor specs :

 

[Gautam]

Didn't know where to put this. Mods please move it to appropriate thread.
Forces prepare to deal with cyber attacks on key infrastructure | India News - Times of India

 

[Gautam]

Welcome AJIT, a ‘Made in India’ Microprocessor
Share120
Arati Halbe
Mumbai Feb 19, (Research Matters):

Image credit: Prof Desai, IIT Bombay

Researchers at IIT Bombay develop the country’s first indigenously designed and fabricated microprocessor.

India’s electronics market is in its biggest boom ever. Fuelled by the demand for electronic devices, it is expected to reach a whopping $400 billion by 2020. Most of the electronic devices we use are imported; only a quarter of the devices are produced in the country. According to statistics, electronic goods in India account for more than 10% of total imports, second only to petroleum products! One electronic equipment that is almost always imported is the microprocessor—the ‘brain’ of an electronic device.

A microprocessor is an integrated circuit (IC) that contains a few millions of transistors (semiconductor-based electronic devices) fused on a semiconductor chip. It is just a few millimetres in dimension and is used in almost every electronic device—from the microwave and washing machine in homes to advanced supercomputers of a space station. However, developing and manufacturing a microprocessor is not easy—it is expensive, risky and needs much skill. Hence, only a handful of companies across the world have been able to manufacture and sell microprocessors successfully.

In an attempt to make a mark in the highly competitive segment of microprocessor manufacturing, engineers from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) have developed a new microprocessor called AJIT—the first ever microprocessor to be conceptualised, designed, developed and manufactured in India. This innovation could not only reduce the country’s imports but also make India self-reliant in electronics.

AJIT marks the first time in the country’s history where the industry, academia and the government have come together. Prof. Madhav Desai and his team of about nine researchers from IIT Bombay have designed and developed the processor entirely at the institute. The project was funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and IIT Bombay. Powai Labs, a Mumbai-based company, has also invested in the venture and will own, market and support the product. “I am thankful to Dr Debashish Dutta of MeitY for championing this project and to Reapan Tikoo of Powai Labs for supporting the project financially and as industry partner,” says Prof Desai acknowledging the contributions of the partner institutions.

“We have been working on this processor design for more than two years now. The design has been tested on programmable semiconductor chips before we began our effort towards fabricating the processor,” says Prof. Desai.​

AJIT - Packed with features

Akin to most microprocessors available today, AJIT comes with an arithmetic logic unit that can do basic arithmetic and logical operations like addition, subtraction and comparison, and a memory management unit that stores and retrieves data from memory. There is also a floating point unit designed to handle calculations with non-integer numbers efficiently. For those who would like to program the microprocessor, there is a hardware debugger unit to help them monitor and control the processor.

AJIT’s features can be compared to many of the microprocessors of its size available in today’s market. Unlike the ones used in the desktops like the Intel’s Xeon, AJIT is a medium-sized processor. It can be used inside a set-top box, as a control panel for automation systems, in a traffic light controller or even robotic systems. What’s more, the researchers expect that AJIT will cost as less as ₹100 when it is produced en-masse! AJIT can run one instruction per clock cycle and can operate at clock speeds between 70-120MHz, comparable to its competitors in the market.

The researchers have made the software tools associated with AJIT freely available to everyone. The processor is also available as a ‘softcore’, where vendors can buy a license to use the design of the microprocessor and fabricate it to use it in their system. The researchers also offer to customise the processor for specific applications.

“The design of the processor is modular, and at some extra cost, vendors can get a processor design with a feature set suitable for the system they are designing”, says Prof. Desai.​

The ‘made-in-India’ advantage

Prof Desai and his team of students---C. Arun, M. Sharath, Neha Karanjkar, Piyush Soni, Titto Anbadan, Ashfaque Ahmed, Aswin Jith, Ch. Kalyani, Nanditha Rao---used a tool set called AHIR-V2, that can convert an algorithm to hardware and which was developed completely at IIT Bombay to design the microprocessor circuit. Prof Desai mentioned that many fruitful discussions with his colleagues in IIT Bombay, Prof V. R. Sule, Prof M. Shojaei-Baghini and Prof M. Chandorkar helped the project and he acknowledged the contribution of H. Jattana, Pooja Dhanker and Shubham of Semiconductor Labs, Chandigarh towards fabrication of the processor.

In the first stage, AJIT has been manufactured in the government-owned Semiconductor Laboratory (SCL), Chandigarh, with a technology that offers the smallest building block of the size 180 nanometers. The researchers also plan to commercially manufacture the processor using more advanced techniques that provide the smallest building block of size 65 nm or 45 nm, which is the current state of the art.

“Fabricating this using 180nm technology is the first step. Although this may not be the state of the art technology, it is enough for most of the targeted applications. Using advanced technology for large manufacturing quantities—tens of lakhs—would bring the cost per piece down”, remarks Prof. Desai.​

A processor made in India offers more than just the cost benefits. It provides the country with autonomy and self-reliance in the electronics sector and reduces our dependence on technology imported from other parts of the world. It also ensures a secure system with no opportunity for any backdoor entry, thus preventing digital sabotage by other countries or malicious organisations. So far, though we have had Indian teams design complete processors in India, no Indian company owns a commercially available microprocessor product. AJIT hopes to change that soon.

A home-grown processor is also likely to reduce the burden of imports. Manufacturers of electronics devices could benefit from the ready availability and competitive price of an Indian device with an added advantage of having the design and support team nearby. If an equipment manufacturer needs any modification or customisation, the design and support team would be accessible.

“Geographical proximity could easily make it possible to get something done in say two weeks time, instead of three months required otherwise”, says Prof. Desai.​

The challenges and the roadmap

The feat of building the indigenous microprocessor was not without challenges. Prof. Desai had only a small group very talented and passionate but inexperienced graduate students, and they worked on a shoestring budget to ensure a sound design before the processor was fabricated. “The challenge was to structure and partition the design in a way suitable to be implemented in this setup. To enable early testing, we created a computer-based model of the processor that could simulate the functionality of the processor in detail. This made testing the processor possible, much before it was fabricated,” recalls Prof. Desai.

It’s not done yet; there are tougher challenges ahead for the team to make the processor commercially viable to make this a grand success story. “For AJIT, we need to get more people to use it. Primary tests have indicated that the specifications of the processor match many in the competition and the new processor would also be cost-competitive. If the business community at large would own this processor, build systems around it so that users, as well as supporters, see value in this and can make money from the effort, then this effort can remain sustainable”, says Prof. Desai.

The researchers hope that since AJIT compares well with other imported processors, it could see many early adopters. They also plan to introduce AJIT to the academia to expand its reach and provide graduating students a hands-on experience. “We could push the usage of this new microprocessor by introducing it as a part of the syllabus in engineering colleges. A well-designed single-board computer system could be made available at a low cost for students and other enthusiasts to experiment with”, suggests Prof. Desai.

On the government’s part, MeitY has extended its funding to enhance the processor and deploy it in government-initiated projects. SAMEER (Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering & Research), an independent lab under MeitY, Government if India is planning to use AJIT in the receivers being developed for NAVIC or IRNNS (The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System), an indigenous navigation system for the Indian subcontinent.

“We are hoping that people use AJIT and plan and build equipment using it. We are ready and prepared to support them. We have a seed, and we need people to grow it”, signs off Prof. Desai.​

Welcome AJIT, a ‘Made in India’ Microprocessor

 

[Gautam]

Inside India's push to build an indigenous semiconductor design ecosystem

Several local companies and academia-industry incubators have mushroomed across the country, designing and testing chipsets, microprocessors and allied technology that could be used commercially.

Anandi Chandrashekhar&Priyanka Sangani | ETtech | May 03, 2019, 06:15 IST


India has been taking quiet but tentative steps towards indigenous chip design capability for a few years now despite the many teething problems, as it looks at homegrown chip development as a strategic necessity.

Several attempts were made to build a semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem, including talks with leading chip manufacturers AMD and TSMC to set up a fab in the country, in tune with the thinking globally, wherein countries realized that local chip development helps protect their strategic interests.

China, for example, is building a homegrown chip program, eyeing adoption of local semiconductors in 70% of its products by 2025, up from 16% currently.

India, for its part, is seeking to create a homegrown fabless semiconductor design ecosystem, and is harnessing local talent and helping nurture academic institutions as well as startups.

The idea is to move to a parallel path from relying just on global technology companies such as Intel, AMD and ARM for microprocessors, and Qualcomm, Samsung and MediaTek for mobile telephony.

Over the last two decades, many global semiconductor companies such as ARM, Qualcomm, Intel, Cadence and Texas Instruments have set up design and software development infrastructure here, helping create a critical mass of talent that understands chip development. The government wants to use that talent to help entrepreneurs work on chip design and a fabless semiconductor ecosystem.

Taking advantage, several local companies and academia-industry incubators have mushroomed across the country, designing and testing chipsets, microprocessors and allied technology that could be used commercially.

The research and development effort, driven both by government-funded academic institutions as well as homegrown technology entrepreneurs, is focusing on promoting domestic manufacturing.

Support has also come in the form a new policy unveiled in February, which aims to make the country a hub for electronics manufacturing and gives special incentives for exports and high-tech projects, including semiconductor facilities.

The thrust of the policy, simply put, is on fabless chip design and strategic electronics capability including in the fields of medicine, automotive and power.

Chipping in

The Indian semiconductor component market is expected to be worth $32.35 billion by 2025, growing at a compunded annual growth rate of 10.1% between 2018 and 2025, according to the Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA), an industry body.

Worldwide, semiconductor revenue totaled $476.7 billion in 2018, a 13.4% increase from 2017, according to preliminary results by technology consultancy Gartner, Inc.

IESA has taken a few baby steps, setting up an accelerator for fabless semiconductor startups, and is planning to accelerate 50 such startups in five years.

These startups, says IESA president Rajesh Ram Mishra, would help build a critical mass to jumpstart the next wave of companies. Already, he says, several companies have built small chips that go into set-top boxes and in solutions using Internet of Things.

For instance, Cirel Systems, a Bengaluru-based chip company has designed a small chip that goes into the digital pens used in tablets made by multinationals, Mishra says, adding the company has produced about 4-5 million such chips already.

Earlier this year, Signalchip, a niche semiconductor product company based in Bengaluru, launched a series of chips named ‘Agumbe’ (after a village in the Shivamogga district of Karnataka) that were targeted towards makers of 4G and 5G modems.

Signalchip is making inroads into the 4G/LTE (Long Term Evolution) and 5G-NR (New Radio) product market, and is being funded by Zoho Corporation and its founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu. 4G/LTE and 5G-NR are wireless communication standards that determine the speed of mobile networks.

The chips designed by Signalchip enable high speed connectivity, but are not used within phones to typically receive and convert signals.

It is vital that India develops the ability to indigenously design and develop silicon chips because wireless communications have become integral to the country’s economic and strategic interests, said Himamshu Khasnis, founder and CEO of Signalchip.

“Silicon chip design is a very challenging activity, requiring high-cost R&D, deep knowhow and mastery of multiple complex domains. Hence, this technology is not available in most countries,” he said.

Vembu of Zoho, which mentored Signalchip, agrees. “During the decoding and demodulation of signals, there is a possibility for external agencies to tap into the data. The defence community is more sensitive now; for security reasons the government also wants to know who uses the data,” he said.

The phone chip market, though, is a little more difficult to penetrate since global technology giants are already entrenched and investors are reluctant to fund long-term R&D projects.

Take, for instance, Mymo Wireless. This Bengaluru-based company incubated out from the Indian Institute of Science - Bangalore ten years ago with a vision to transform the Indian microchip industry and emerge as a challenger to US-headquartered Qualcomm.

The company initially gained expertise in chip making, focusing on building IP, licensing its technology and building chips for other companies. It was a strategic decision that helped it earn a steady 30% profit.

However, it soon realised that chip-making was an expensive proposition. When the company tried raising $20 million a year ago, no venture capitalist was willing to invest in the effort. “Indians lack the risk-taking ability to invest this much money for a longer time period. They want to see returns next year,” said co-founder Sondur Madhan Babu. Not long after, it was acquired by a US-based technocrat with a similar vision — building the next Qualcomm.

“I’m sad that we’re no longer an Indian company, but as an entrepreneur I have to think of my business. The vision at least is still the same,” Babu said.

The struggle is quite similar for Saankhya Labs, another successful Bengaluru-based startup that has been creating chipsets for use in defence, satellite communication and broadcast.

The company launched a mobile-ready, next generation system-on-chip, Pruthvi-3, which was designed for use in mobile devices, broadcast, satellite and defence communications.

Saankhya is currently a technology partner to ISRO and is working on a project for the Indian Railways. It has installed chips on 1,000 locomotives to track their locations accurately, up to a maximum time-lag of 30 seconds.

Be that as it may, the chip segment in India hasn’t really taken off due to a lack of venture capital interest and funding for hardware and product firms, said co-founder and CEO, Parag Naik.

For example, the largest semiconductor supplier, Samsung Electronics, increased its lead as the No. 1 vendor in 2018, and the combined revenue of the top 25 semiconductor vendors increased by 16.3% during 2018, accounting for 79.3% of the market, according to Gartner data.

In comparison, the rest of the market saw a milder 3.6% revenue increase, it said.

Professor’s playthings

There are two types of chips essentially — semiconductors that requires huge investments, and smaller ones for products such as energy meters, LED lighting, smartcards and rural broadband.

Academia, which is mostly government-funded, is developing core technology, especially in the micro-processing space, dominated by multinationals such as Intel, AMD and ARM.

Earlier in the year, a team from IIT Bombay unveiled a chip designed completely in-house, AJIT, which is being tested for use in GPS receivers developed for India’s own satellite navigation system, NAVIC.

NAVIC is the operational name for the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System that provides accurate real-time positioning and timing data, and was originally developed for hostile situations wherein access to foreign satellite systems would not have been guaranteed.

Madhav Desai, professor of electrical engineering at IIT-B, who is working on the digital aspects of the project, said the processor design of AJIT has been completed and the SoC based on the processor has received interest from the industry.

“If NAVIC becomes successful, there are a 2-3 companies keen to commercialise it. We are looking at June 2020 as the commercial production timeline. There is enough interest given the indigenous origin of the technology,” he said.

At counterpart IIT Madras, the microprocessor program Shakti is also in full swing.

Shakti, led by Kamakoti Veezhinathan, professor in the department of computer science and engineering, has been designed to reduce dependency on foreign computing resources and reduce the risk of cyber-attacks.

The Shakti microprocessor can be used in mobile computing devices, embedded low power wireless systems like smartphones, surveillance cameras and networking systems. Shakti can also help reduce risks associated with deploying external systems that may be infected with back-doors and hardware Trojans.

Built using open-source architecture, Shakti has seen much interest from companies for strategic applications. The team has also developed an advanced microprocessor for supercomputers called ‘Parashakti’.

In Pune, the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a government-funded research body, is designing India’s 64-bit quad-core microprocessor as well as exascale computing systems that have the capability of one exaflops, or one billion billion calculations per second.

“We’re working towards having a viable architecture for exascale computing ready by 2022. This would bring in a lot of disruptive technology,” Hemant Darbari, director-general, C-DAC told ET in a recent interview.

C-DAC is also working on a range of processors for image processing and smart energy meters, in a bid to develop homegrown solutions for a range of applications.

Despite the evident successes in government-aided chip development, there are several roadblocks, says Anushree Verma, principal analyst at consultancy Gartner.

For one, there are no commercial semiconductor fabrication plants in India as of now.

There are two labs, the Semiconductor Laboratories Ltd, a unit owned by Indian Space Research Organisation in Chandigarh, and SITAR, a unit of DRDO, each of which build silicon chips for defence and space needs.

The Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay has a Centre of Excellence in Nanoelectronics, which has a lab-like facility in collaboration with IISc, Bangalore.

A proposal to get IISc to build a Galium Nitride fabrication facility, submitted by planning body NITI Aayog, has yet to be approved.

“There were two consortia approved in 2014, but they were all held up due to some issues. And, after this, there has been no further development recently,” Verma said.

Yet, despite persistent problems, technology entrepreneurs want to play the long game and are positive about building homegrown chips for communication and defence needs.

“India runs up a huge bill in purchase of these value-added components from abroad. It is important to slowly build up capability in order to help brings jobs in core R&D,” said Vembu of Zoho.

After all, “Intel did not become what it is in a month or a year. This will take time,” Desai of IIT-B pointed out.
https://prime.economictimes.indiati...elow_article&utm_campaign=ETPrimedistribution
Inside India's push to build an indigenous semiconductor design ecosystem - ETtech

 

[_Anonymous_]

Please keep posting more on this sector. I certainly find it to be very illuminating. @Gautam

 

[Gautam]

India Makes The Most Cost-Efficient Chip Ajit That Can Power Robotic & Automation Systems

AMBIKA CHOUDHURY
4 DAYS AGO


India provides a worldwide opportunity for growth in consumer electronics. According to this report, revenue in the consumer electronics segment amounts to US$ 6,734 million in 2019 and is expected to show an annual growth rate of 16.2%, resulting in a market volume of US$ 12,281 million by 2023.

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay has been making continuous efforts to its research and development field with the national goal of achieving technological self-reliance. Researchers at IIT Bombay have designed, developed and fabricated the first ever microprocessor known as AJIT, a Sparc-V8 ISA compliant processor.

For the first time in the history of India, the academia, government and the industry have joined their hands to build India’s first microprocessor. Professor Madhav Desai along with his team of nine researchers from the Tier 1 institute has made the project possible. The project was funded by the institute along with Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). A Mumbai-based company, Powai Labs has also made contributions and provided financial support to the product.

Specs

The microprocessor is the brain of an electronic device which contains a few millions of transistors fused on a semiconductor chip. This medium-sized processor is based on a 32-bit ISA and can run one instruction per clock cycle and can operate at clock speeds between 70-120MHz, comparable to its competitors in the market. The processor comes with a memory management unit, an arithmetic logic unit, and a floating point unit. The researchers used a tool which can convert an algorithm to hardware known as AHIR-V2.

The Bright Side

Such innovations will not only develop a cost-effective way with a decrease in imports but also make India a self-reliant country on electronic products. According to the sources, one of the processor’s designers said, “We are planning to use AJIT in the receivers being developed for NAVIC or IRNNS (The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System), an indigenous navigation system for the Indian subcontinent.” He added, “It can be used inside as a set-top box, as a control panel for automation systems, in a traffic light controller or even robotic systems.” SAMEER (Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering & Research), an independent lab under MeitY, Govt. of India is planning to use AJIT in the receivers being developed for NAVIC or IRNNS. The researchers expect that AJIT will cost as less as ₹100 when it is produced en-masse.

Similar Development

Furthermore, it is worth mentioning, India has also developed its first RISC-V based processor Shakti last year. A team of researchers and students from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have developed this chip and made the design open-sourced. The chip is clocking at 400MHz speed and a majority of the front-end design is done using Bluespec System Verilog. The Shakti Project includes a family of six types of microprocessors and has been broadly categorised into base processors, multi-core processors and experimental processors. This chip is basically aimed in using towards smartphones and the Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Roadmap

According to the reports, the demand for electronic products in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 41 percent during 2017-2020 to reach $400 billion by 2020. Most of the electronic devices we use are imported from outside and with such kinds of development, the future of India will be a brighter and a cost-effective one. Giants such as Intel, ARM, Nvidia, etc. are the older players in this market and with the advent of such processors, the future of technology will undoubtedly see a new phase.

India Makes The Most Cost-Efficient Chip Ajit That Can Power Robotic & Automation Systems

 

[Gautam]

AJIT is a Microprocessor Made in India
APRIL 23, 2019 BY JEAN-LUC AUFRANC (CNXSOFT)



There are only a few countries with companies that can design and/or manufacture chips. Some of the ones that come to my mind off the bat include: the US, China, Taiwan, Japan, France, and Italy. But India did not… That’s until recently as IIT Bombay conceived AJIT the first Indian microprocessor, which was then manufactured at the Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL) in Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab and Haryana states.

Details are limited. For example, I’m unable to find out which architecture was used by the processor, but we do know it’s a microcontroller class 32-bit microprocessor clocked at 70 to 120 MHz with an arithmetic logic unit, a memory management unit, a floating point unit, as well as a hardware debugger unit.

The sample pictured above has been manufactured with a 180nm process, but they plan to move to a 65nm process eventually. Tools used for development include AHIR-V2 which has been released in Github. Some of the applications include set-top boxes (not as media chip obviously), control panels for automation systems, traffic light controllers or robotic systems. AJIT should cost around 100 rupees ($1.44) once mass production starts.



It will take a while before the Indian semiconductor sector takes off (if it does), but at least they are building the talent pool, and over time this should allow India to become more independent for critical applications like military or utilities.

AJIT is a Microprocessor Made in India