Calcutta:

IIT Kharagpur is exploring the possibility of using a platform developed by a group of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, that can be freely used for designing semiconductor chips.

In the foreseeable future, Digital India will need application-specific chips in every conceivable domain but today only a handful of companies have the ability to design integrated circuits (IC).

Inspired by the success of open source software, SiFive, a US-based company, aims to change the ecosystem of chip design by promoting OpenSilicon – a platform where pre-designed open source components can be stitched together to design customised ICs.

The OpenSilicon platform already provides the open source RISC-V processor developed by the researchers at UC Berkeley.

Recently, SiFive hosted an academic symposium at a city hotel, where cost-effective ways to design and fabricate semiconductor chips were discussed threadbare. The symposium was attended by professors from IIT Kharagpur.

Later, the academics explained the significance of the conclave.
Designing semiconductor chips require sophisticated and expensive software tools or CAD tools and years of experience. Chip fabrication costs are astronomical. For any start-up that wants to get into custom chip designing, the costs and skill requirements are difficult to overcome.

“It is a promising initiative. Offering open source pre-designed components through a cloud-based design framework has the potential to bring down the design cost. Also, bundling multiple custom ICs in a single fabrication cycle can help in sharing the fabrication costs among the partners,” said Pallab Dasgupta, dean, Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy, IIT Khargpur.

Dasgupta is also a professor in the department of computer science and engineering with years of experience in electronic design automation.

The IIT has an advanced chip design laboratory since 2000, which has successfully designed and tested more than 100 chips with its fabrication partners. It carries out research for top global semiconductor and EDA companies.

SiFive is aiming to let more start-ups use its platform to minimise the cost of developing semiconductor chips and rid the chip design industry of the proprietary regime of a handful of wealthy companies, said Yunsup Lee, co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of SiFive.

“India is home to some of best research and educational institutions in the world. We are honoured to host presentations from the academic luminaries who are on the frontlines of innovation and research in the areas of machine learning, hardware verification, circuit design and more,” said Yunsup, who delivered a lecture at the symposium.

When Metro asked him to explain what prompted the company to hit upon the concept of looking beyond the proprietary regime, Yunsup, who has done his PhD from UC Berkeley, where he co-designed the RISC-V ISA and the first RISC-V microprocessors with Andrew Waterman, said: “At the University of California, Berkeley, we believe in taking the technology to a larger pool of users so the technology can do greater good. This was developed during our student days. With this motto in mind, we are touring 20 cities across the globe to popularise the concept.”

IIT Kharagpur director Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, who attended the session, said: “The concept they have floated is innovative. We are holding talks about a tie-up that the company has proposed.”

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Subhankar Chowdhury / September 14th, 2018