An Indian Microprocessor

The Electronic design service industry has been a strong suite of Indian semiconductor community. While the government policy and incentives towards a fabrication plant have miserably failed, it is heartening to learn that an Indian microprocessor is being thought of.

Though primarily meant for defence applications, an Indian microprocessor has the potential to spawn a range of design activities in India and is strongly welcomed. It needs to be noted that the proposal is still in draft stage and Indian bureaucracy is notoriously slow, so need to wait and watch.

Report : Govt to Chip in with India Microprocessor

Snippets ....

The below number is significant. With increased popularity of cutting edge consumer electronics, demand for these is expected to shoot up. With the miserable failure of the semiconductor incentives, it is quite possible that India will have to import bulk of these devices, and by extension will have to forgo a good part of our forex reserves just to meet this thirst. India needs to find ways to be more self-sufficient on this front to continue to enjoy a healthy forex reserves. Just for comparison, Indian forex reserves as of June 2009 are at $262 Billion, against China's $2132 Billion. [ref]

• Demand for microchips from India’s booming technology sector is expected to touch $315 billion by 2015, but a semiconductor policy of previous years to encourage firms to manufacture them locally evoked little interest from the private sector.

On how devastating compromised systems can be, the reports says :

• The government document, a copy of which is with ET, presents several such scenarios. If the Indian Army's WAN (Wide Area Network) is cut off from other networks, hypothetically the army’s equipment can still be activated wirelessly by foreign parties to transfer information or compromise it, the document says.
• “Unless India has its own microprocessor, we can never ensure that networks (that require microprocessors) such as telecom, Army WAN, and microprocessors used in BARC, ISRO, in aircraft such as Tejas, battle tanks and radars are not compromised,” the document points out.

It is also interesting that the team opted for Open Sparc architecture and Linux.

• The India Microprocessor is likely to adopt Sun Microsystem’s Open Sparc opensource chip design technology, along with Linux operating system and MySQL database software

The following conclusions are conflicting though..

• “History has shown that the need for defence security has sparked a chip industry in most nations,” she said. Unlike the US and China, India still does not have chip-making technology, and Zerone seeks to change that.
• However, the fabrication of chips will be outsourced to a private foundry overseas, as India still does not have one.

Either way, if this takes off, it augurs well for domestic semiconductor industry.