04/11/2018
Shakti : India's First Indigenous Microprocessor Created By IIT-Madras
The Indian Institute of Technology Madras has designed and booted up 'Shakti', which can be used for wireless and networking systems, as well as mobile computing. 'Shakti' is India's first and indigenous microprocessor. Bluespec, an open-source high-level synthesis language was used in making the chips.
The concept to design the chip was germinated in 2011 and some preliminary works were carried out. In 2017, the project gained speed with about Rs 11 crore funding from the Indian government.
RISC-V Workshop in Chennai, India, hosted by The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras), achieved a significant milestone by booting Linux on its first ever RISC-V based silicon chip processor named Shakti (Project Page). The team (which is partly funded by MeiTY, GOI as part of the India Microprocessor development project ) aims to create a critical mass of CPU architects in India, according to the project lead (Via: Geek Dave, Hacker News, Twitter). Open-Source, patent-free domestic CPU production is well on the cards, according to experts.
RISC-V
For those of you who are not familiar, RISC-V is an open ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) developed as a project in 2010 by the University of California, Berkeley. First of all, an instruction set is merely the set of commands given to a CPU in machine language. Basically, it tells the CPU what it needs to do like, for example, add or compare.
Due to their lower power consumption, ARM (Advanced RISC Machine) instruction set-based chips have dominated smartphone, tablets and other small device markets. Shakti is The RISC-V based processor that has been designed with small, speed, and low-power consumption in mind.
Currently clocking at 400MHz, DMIPS/MHz – 1.67, this isn’t by any means outclassing raspberry Pi performance (nor does it intend to). It is a test chip taped-out on Intel’s 22nm FinFET Technology. Furthermore, the fact that Linux was able to boot presents a proof of concept of design by which the project team could further move towards more production-grade SoC designs.
According to industry analysts, RISC-V based chips such as Shakti could be major players in IoT, and AI with an extensive ecosystem is in place.
