The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) is hosting the second digital India RISC-V (DIR-V) symposium. The two-day symposium was inaugurated on Sunday.
India was systematically building its presence in the semiconductor landscape, said former Union Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar.
A leader in RISC-V research and development and with pioneering work on Shakti family of processors, the institute has developed India’s first indigenous RISC-V based processor ecosystem. It is collaborating with the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and RISC-V International for the conduct of the symposium at IIT-M research park.
The symposium will discuss the country’s semiconductor roadmap and the latest advancements in RISC-V based processor design, open-source hardware innovations. It will include experts from India and the world over, policymakers, start-ups, academia and industry pioneers.
RISC-V International is a non-profit arm of the open-standard RISC-V instruction set architecture. Experts from 70 countries and more than 4,200 members are contributing and collaborating to define RISC-V open specifications. They will convene and govern related technical, industry, domain and special interest groups.
Institute director V. Kamakoti said Mr. Chandrasekar had coined the word “Digital India RISC-V”. The symposium brought together designers, chip architects and product OEMs, besides application OEMs on a single platform, he said, adding that it was crucial that the entire microprocess-based ecosystem be developed in the country.
He said for almost 25 years, Indian entrepreneurs, brands, and companies had lagged behind in semiconductors and electronics. The country was an innovation economy that worked using architecture, platforms and systems designed and built elsewhere. Software stacks and layers of applications were created. The country now has the opportunity to script the future as the technology cycles are repeating themselves. “We are almost at the starting stage of the next wave of what would be the future of technology and the future of compute. India can play a significant role, including with the RISC-ISA and the DIR-V programme,” he said.
The minister hoped that DIR-V ecosystem would create real commercial success and applications.
Published – March 03, 2025 10:45 pm IST