IIT Madras builds microprocessor for India’s smart cities, working on iClass chip

• The project was funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, fabrication at an ISRO facility in Chandigarh and motherboard manufactured in Bengaluru.

Bengaluru: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has developed an indigenously-made microprocessor with an aim to power up the growing need for IoT devices in the country.

“The experiment was undertaken to mainly demonstrate our ability to develop an ecosystem. We aimed to clock between 70 to 100MHz and I am happy to say that we achieved 100MHz,” said Prof. Kamakoti Veezhinathan, Reconfigurable Intelligent Systems Engineering (RISE) Group, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras.

Called MOUSHIK, the processor cum ‘system on chip’ was conceptualised, designed and developed at the Pratap Subrahmanyam Centre for Digital Intelligence and Secure Hardware Architecture (PS-CDISHA) of the RISE Group, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras.

“The processor we have developed is an open-source one and can be further developed and customised based on domain-specific architecture,” said Prof. Veezhinathan.

The Indian government last month launched “Swadeshi Microprocessor Challenge” in an effort to achieve self-reliance in technology. As part of the initiative, IIT Madras and Center for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) developed the two microprocessors named Shakti (32 bit) and Vega (64 bit) respectively using Open Source Architecture under the aegis of Microprocessor Development Programme of the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY).

Drawing the attention

The MOUSHIK project was funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India.

The design of the microprocessor, motherboard printed circuit board design, assembly and post-silicon boot-up were done at IIT Madras.

The foundry-specific backend design and fabrication were undertaken at the Semi-Conductor Laboratory of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Chandigarh and the manufacturing of this motherboard was done at Bengaluru.

The first indigenous chip in the SHAKTI series was designed and booted up in October 2018. “Shakthi MOUSHIK SOC will constitute the heart of an indigenously-developed motherboard called ‘Ardonyx 1.0,” he said.

As per the latest research, the number of IoT devices is expected to grow to 24.1 billion and in terms of revenue rise to $1.5 trillion by 2030.

$1 microporcessor

“We are doing it at the right time. In India alone, we are looking at massive digital transformation with millions of devices being deployed at multiple sectors. We need to be ready for the deployment,” he said, adding that with optimum numbers, it should cost less than $1 to produce each microprocessor.

According to him, the department is also working on indigenously developing the more advanced iClass chip, which it expects to be ready by June 2021 – delayed by about six months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The super-scale processor will be the basic building blocks for mobile phones and supercomputers. We are also working on enhancing the processors with advanced security features, ability to execute AI and ML programs and edge intelligence,” he added.