Indian government plan: delivery of world-class RISC-V chips by the end of 2023

Indian government plan: delivery of world-class RISC-V chips by the end of 2023

Indian government plan: delivery of world-class RISC-V chips by the end of 2023

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of India has announced a DIR-V – Digital India RISC-V Microprocessor Initiative, an Indian native chip design and production program based on the open source RISC-V architecture , initially scheduled for implementation by December 2023 Design of industrial-grade chips, achieve commercial mass production and push them to the world.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India’s Minister of State for Electronics and IT, a former Intel x-86 processor chip designer, said in the announcement that the Indian Ministry of Electronics and IT will join the RISC-V International Foundation as a principal board member:

Over the past decade, RISC-V has emerged as a powerful alternative to ARM and the x-86 architecture, which has no licensing burden and can be used for a variety of design purposes in the semiconductor industry.

The free and open nature of RISC-V allows it to bring together the ideas of the world’s top engineers, creating an unprecedented level of processor innovation, and even pushing Moore’s Law to its limits.

Now is a good time to advocate for India’s strong presence in the RISC-V global community, with Indian industry and academia teams developing system-on-chips (SoCs) for servers, mobile devices, automotive applications, IoT devices and microcontrollers.

At present, India’s native RISC-V processor has two finished chips: Shakti and Vega, but the architecture of these two chips is not advanced.

The latest version of Shakti is based on a 180nm process, uses a 32-bit core, and runs between 75Mhz ~ 100MHz.

The Vega processor’s architecture and process are more sophisticated, but it is far from the “world-class chip” goal expected by the Indian government.

In fact, the Indian government has attached great importance to the development of RISC-V since 2020, when it held a RISC-V-based chip design competition to promote the localization of RISC-V in India. And this DIR-V plan further shows India’s determination to develop its own chips.