IIT Madras develops indigenous Shakti semiconductor chip for ISRO

The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and the Indian Space Research Organisation have developed an indigenous aerospace quality Shakti-based semiconductor chip. IIT Madras director V. Kamakoti led the Shakti microprocessor project at Prathap Subrahmanyam Centre for Digital Intelligence and Secure Hardware Architecture in the institute’s Computer Science and Engineering department. ISRO inertial systems unit in Thiruvananthapuram proposed the idea of a 64bit RISC-V based controller and collaborated with IIT Madras to define the specifications and design of the semiconductor chip. Institute director V. Kamakoti said: “After Rimo in 2018 and Moushik in 2020, this is the third Shakti chip we have fabricated at SCL and successfully booted at IIT Madras. That the chip design, fabrication, packaging motherboard design and fabrication, assembly software and boot have all happened in India, is yet another validation that the complete semiconductor ecosystem and expertise exists within the country.” ISRO chairman V. Narayanan said, the end-to-end indigenously manufactured chip with Indian resources marked a milestone in the ‘Make in India’ efforts in semiconductor design and fabrication.