Govt plans to roll out indigenous chipsets by ’23-24

NEW DELHI: The government has set a timeline to commercially roll out the first indigenous chipsets by 2023-24 under the Digital India RISC-V programme launched on Wednesday, Union minister of state for electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Wednesday.

The Digital India RISC-V (DIR-V) programme aims to create future generations of microprocessors that will serve the need of India’s strategic focus on mobility, computing and digitisation, the minister said.

“One big milestone that I am very focused on is to have the first set of commercial silicon of Shakti and Vega processors available by December 2023 or early 2024,” Chandrasekhar said.

“We want at least a few companies to adopt their product designs to DIR-V products Shakti and Vega before 2023-24 and when the silicon is ready, they should start manufacturing and incorporating chips in the prodinvestors, ucts,” Chandrasekhar said.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and the Centre for Development of Advance Computing (CDAC) have developed two microprocessors named Shakti (32 bit) and Vega (64 bit) respectively using open source architecture under the microprocessor development programme of the ministry.

The government has appointed IIT Madras director Professor V Kamakoti as chief architect and CDAC Trivandrum scientist Krishnakumar Rao as programme manager of the DIR-V programme.

The DIR-V programme will consolidate and leverage the ongoing efforts in the country with an integrated multi-institutional and multi-location team, finalise the formal architecture and target performance of chipsets, support original equipment makers and design wins in India and abroad. The DIR-V initiative is part of the government’s ₹76,000 crore effort to build a semiconductor ecosystem in the country.