IIT Bhubaneshwar recently received the green light from the ministry of electronics and information technology for the implementation of the Chips to Startup program (C2S). This program is a part of the central government’s plan to transform India into a chip manufacturing hub. During a recent visit to the IIT institute electronics and IT minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw transferred the letter of approval to the institution, for the implementation of the proposal named “Energy efficient mesh architecture based indigenous neuromorphic processor for extreme edge IoT applications”.
He also announced the commencement of a centre named Chips to Startup (C2S) at IIT Bhubaneshwar. “Semiconductor journey begins for Bhubaneswar. Today IIT Bhubaneswar joins PM Narendra Modi’s semiconductor mission,” said the Union minister here on Sunday.
The objective of the C2S program is to prepare nearly 85,000 handy and qualified engineers in the area of very large-scale integration (VLSI) and Embedded System Design. It will also help in the development of 175 application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), working prototypes of 20 system on chips (SoC) and an intellectual property core repository over a period of five years. Sources from the IIT institute said that the chips are widely used in mobiles, computers, gaming consoles, cars, medical equipment and other electronic devices. They usually have multiple integrated circuits (ICs). The semiconductor wafers are further used to make chips. “Under this programme, we will design chips. If we get facilities and favourable conditions here, we can also manufacture this in future,” said a professor of the institution. He further added that the C2S program will handle the problems related to quality workforce training, research and development, hardware intellectual property design, system design, application-oriented research and development and prototype design.
Recently, the institute designed and developed low-power semiconductor chips which can be utilised in audio-based electronic component manufacturing.
