New Delhi At the launch of Digital India RISC-V program on Wednesday, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajiv Chandrashekhar said that the government will work with startups to help design and develop semiconductors and in large scale partnerships with global manufacturing companies. will enable production.
Chandrashekhar said the government has set a deadline for commercially rolling out the first indigenous chipsets and future generations of microprocessors by 2023-24 as part of the program to meet the growing demand for semiconductors in the automotive, mobility and computing segments. is of.
“A big milestone that I am very focused on is for the first set of commercial silicon to power and Vega processors to be available by December 2023 or early 2024. We want at least some companies to adopt their product designs to power DIR-V products. And Vega before 2023-24 and when the silicon is ready, they should start manufacturing and incorporating chips into the products,” he said.
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and Center for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) have developed two microprocessors named Shakti (32 bit) and Vega (64 bit) using open source architecture.
The government has appointed IIT-Madras director Professor V. Kamakoti as chief architect and CDAC-Thiruvananthapuram scientist Krishnakumar Rao as program manager of the DIR-V programme.
The DIR-V program will consolidate and leverage on-going efforts in the country with an integrated multi-institutional and multi-location team, finalizing the formal architecture and target performance of the chipset, supporting original equipment manufacturers and The design will win overseas. The DIR-V initiative is part of the government 76,000 crore effort to create a semiconductor ecosystem in the country.
“We also believe that over the next year and a half, partnerships between the Shakti and Vega teams and the overall DIR-V program with platform companies such as HP, VVDN, and Apple, and with a large number of companies in the electronic ecosystem will enhance the strength of Power and Vega’s products. Design around the DIR-V family will help create victory,” Chandrasekhar said.
According to the government’s vision document, India will use semiconductors worth $70-80 billion to manufacture electronics products worth $300 billion by 2026. The Center is aiming to make the country self-reliant in the semiconductor segment, the shortage of which has led to increase in input costs for products and services, leading to inflation. India also aims to build semiconductor fabs and has sought interest from global companies to set up manufacturing plants in the country, which will entail an investment of billions of dollars.
The government had earlier said it had received proposals from five companies to set up electronic chips and demonstrate manufacturing plants. 1.53 trillion under the Semicon India program, which included incentives to the tune of 76,000 crores. Vedanta Foxconn JV, IGSS Ventures and ISMC have proposed to set up an electronic chip manufacturing plant with an investment of $13.6 billion and have sought support of $5.6 billion from the Centre. 76,000 crore Semicon India program.