IIT Madras and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology host the "Digital India RISC-V Symposiu

On August 6, 2023, at the IIT Madras Research Park, the "Digital India RISC-V Symposium," a one-day exhibition of the "future of Electronics in India through the RISC-V pathway," was held. The Symposium featured thought-provoking technical presentations by renowned academics and industry leaders, interactive booths exhibiting homegrown RISC-V processors, an exciting hackathon, and a special Investor meeting.

The Government of India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, IIT Madras, and IITM Pravartak Technologies Foundation organised the symposium. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Indian government's minister of state for electronics and information technology, took part remotely in the activity. Along with academics, teachers, and students, Professor V Kamakoti, the director of IIT Madras, participated in the study.

Actions Taken By The India Government

The Digital India RISC-V Microprocessor (DIR-V) Programme was launched by the Government of India with the overall goal of developing Microprocessors for the future in India, for the world, and achieving industry-grade silicon and Design wins by December 2023. This is a significant step towards Atmanirbhar Bharat.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India's Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, addressed the symposium electronically. He remarked, "India was a consumer of technologies less than ten years ago. We were on the periphery of this core deep tech ecosystem of semiconductors, electronics, and high-performance computing, and India was a sizable market that absorbed technology and advances that were invented outside of this country.

The vision that India must move from being a consumer of technologies to a nation where our innovators and start-ups are architecting and designing platforms, solutions, systems, products, and devices as much as any other nation in the world was first presented by our Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in 2015. We are now discussing the future of DIR-V (Digital India RISC-V) and how IIT Madras is quickly becoming a hub for innovation, creativity, and future systems around DIR-V, 15 months after the SEMICON program was introduced, he continued.

Professor V Kamakoti, the DIR-V program's chief architect, and Krishnakumar Rao, the senior director of CDAC Trivandrum, both received congratulations from Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

Between CDAC and IIT Madras, you are unquestionably emerging as a beacon for all those academic institutions throughout the world that are interested in joining this quickly galloping ecosystem of semiconductor and electronics innovation. They are being motivated by you to participate as well.

"The Government of India is very committed to making DIR-V the Indian ISA," Rajeev Chandrasekhar continued. The majority of our operations and programs are in the DIR-V programs, while we may still have some in the x86/ARM arena. Our objective is to ensure that DIR-V has a significant presence in all of the innovations, systems, technologies, and capabilities that we require in the automotive IoT sensor area, mobility space, and high-performance computing environment.

Other Announcements

During the event, the outcomes of the RISC-V "Capture The Bug" Hackathon, organised by Vyoma Systems Pvt. Ltd., were also disclosed.

IIT Madras Director Professor V Kamakoti gave a speech at the event and said that "today is a key event in the journey of semiconductors that our country has started. We began this voyage in 2013-2014 because we thought there would be a significant worldwide digital revolution and that numerous electronic devices would become more pervasive in our daily lives. Each of those gadgets would include a microprocessor, so a determined effort must be made to produce our own microprocessors for the national market. We must build our own domestic microprocessor and understand its components. We ought to be able to easily set up and modify the microprocessors to meet the requirements," he continued.