Indian Institute of Technology Madras researchers have booted up a microprocessor ‘Moushik’.
Moushik, a processor-cum-system on a chip that can cater to the rapidly-growing IoT devices, was conceptualised, designed and developed at Pratap Subrahmanyam Centre for Digital Intelligence and Secure Hardware Architecture (PS-CDISHA) of RISE group, Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the institute.
The project was funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
V. Kamakoti, one of the members of the Reconfigurable Intelligent Systems Engineering (RISE) group at the CSE department, said the three steps in the making of a microprocessor such as design, fabrication and post-silicon boot-up were taken up in India.
“The design of the microprocessor, motherboard printed circuit board design, assembly and post-silicon boot-up were done at IIT Madras. The foundry-specific back-end design and fabrication was undertaken at Semi-Conductor Laboratory of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in Chandigarh and manufacturing of this motherboard was done at Bengaluru. Shakthi Moushik SOC will constitute the heart of an indigenously-developed motherboard called Ardonyx 1.0,” he said.
The field application of Moushik includes smart cards, such as credit and debit cards; ID cards; travel cards for Metros and driving licences; electronic voting machines; office management systems including attendance, surveillance cameras and safe locks; personalised health management systems; consumer electronics, including washing machines and water pump monitoring systems.
The indigenous microprocessor built to international standards, reduces dependence on other countries and as it is open source the design can be picked up by start ups and customised to their needs. The indigenous effort reduces the risk of deploying systems that may be infected with back-doors and hardware Trojans, the researchers said.
Published - September 24, 2020 06:36 pm IST
