ChipIN, the one-stop centre for chip designers across the country, gets fillip with support from semiconductor industry leaders

“This is a huge opportunity for current and budding entrepreneurs from Trivandrum and Kerala, to be at the starting line of designing and reimagining the systems, devices and products of tomorrow. Inline with the vision of Hon’ble Prime Minister – Shri Narendra Modi Ji’s of India being a semicon hub for the world, we believe that the future is not only about manufacturing semiconductors but also about designing chips and IPs for all industries” – Union Minister of State for Electronics & IT, Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, and Jal Shakti Rajeev Chandrasekhar said while addressing the students, researchers, industry leaders and members from Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in Kerala today at the 4^th Semicon India futureDESIGN Roadshow on 06^th March 2024. During the roadshow, Minister also highlighted & appreciated the support of industry to the future design initiative of designing chips in India, for the world.

ChipIN Centre is one of the biggest of existing facilities, offering plethora of design flows, aims to bring the chip design infrastructure at door-steps of semiconductor design community in the country. It is a centralized design facility, not only hosting the most advanced tools for entire chip design cycle (i.e. Front-end design, Back-end design, PCB design & analysis, etc. for Digital, Analog, RF & Mixed Signal designs), going up to 5nm or advanced node but also provide aggregate services for fabrication of design at foundries and packaging. Details at https://chips-dli.gov.in/DLI/EDANew

Presently engaged with about 10,000 students from 120 academic institutions and 20 start-ups, ChipIN Centre aims to provide access of state-of-the-art EDA Tools to 85,000 students at B.Tech, M.Tech and PhD level to design semiconductor chips. During the futureDESIGN roadshow, semiconductor industry further extended following support to ChipIN Centre:

1. Keysight Technologies, a leading supplier of the electronics test and measurement equipment and software, partnered with ChipIN Centre to extend their EDA Tools offerings to start-ups and academia under the DLI Scheme and C2S Programme.
2. Synopsys extended its EDA tools at ChipIN for pan-India academia without any limit on number of institutions; in addition to their earlier offerings to start-ups.
3. Cadence Design Systems & Siemens EDA extended their EDA tools at ChipIN to 150 academic institutions under the C2S Programme; in addition to their earlier offerings to start-ups.

• (iv) Siemens EDA extended the Veloce Emulator with capacity of about 650 million gate designs to Start-ups/ Academia under the DLI Scheme/ C2S Programme.

MeitY also announced financial support for 2 more semiconductor design startups/ MSMEs under the DLI scheme during the futureDESIGN Roadshow at VSSC Thiruvananthapuram.

1. WiSig Networks is a fabless startup incubated at IIT-Hyderabad that specializes in developing solutions for 5G base stations, 5G integrated access backhaul, 5G UE stacks, NB-IoT, and Satcom System on Chips (SoCs). Under the DLI scheme, Wisig Networks proposes to design a 5G NB-IoT System on Chip with integrated baseband and radio, an application processor, and GPS functionality for location tracking for implementing Energy and utility metering solutions and livestock tracking.

2. GreenPMU Semi is a fabless startup incubated at IIT Hyderabad which specialises at building power management ICs capable of harvesting energy from multiple sources to realize battery-free IoT solutions. Under the DLI scheme, Green PMU Semi proposes to design a multi-input Energy Harvesting Power Management IC for IoT applications.

Director-Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (ISRO), Director-Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (ISRO) and Senior members from the semiconductor industry were also present; who highlighted how the Government has built an innovation ecosystem that will create a bright future including Indian country heads from NVIDIA, Renesas Electronics, IBM, Marvell Technology and key officials from Cadence Designs Systems and Keysight Technologies.