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Meet India’s Atmanirbhar Microprocessor chip ‘Moushik’, meant for IoT devices

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras on Thursday said its researchers have successfully developed ‘MOUSHIK’, an indigenously-made microprocessor for the Internet of things (IoT) devices.

According to the institute, ‘MOUSHIK’ is a processor cum asystem on chip’ that can cater to the rapidly-growing IoT devices, an integral part of smart cities of a digital India.

It was conceptualised, designed and developed at the Pratap Subrahmanyam Centre for Digital Intelligence and Secure Hardware Architecture (PS-CDISHA) of the RISE Group, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras.

Researchers at IIT-Madras have have successfully booted up(initialized) ‘Moushik,’ a Microprocessor that has been indigenously designed and fabricated in India. Moushik is a processor cum System on Chip(SoC), which means that, as a processor it can execute the instructions and as a SoC, different components can be attached to the it. This is the third in the series of six computer chips being designed as a part of the Shakti Microprocessor programme. 

Speaking of the user applications of this processor, Prof. V. Kamakoti, Reconfigurable Intelligent Systems Engineering (RISE) Group, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT-Madras says that they can be used in Credit cards, Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), surveillance cameras, safe locks, personalized Health Management Systems and a boost of other Internet of Things (IoT) devices. 

“This is a 180nm chip with a 100Mhz speed and can cater to various small devices and home appliances. In terms of cost, if there is an order for one million units, cost can be brought down to even 1USD per chip. Even though it is of less processing power, India needs billions of such chips for various purposes” he told WION. 

The processor development is a joint effort between Indian academia and scientific facilities. While the Design of the Microprocessor, Motherboard PCB, its Assembly and Post-Silicon Boot-up were done at IIT Madras, the foundry-specific backend design and fabrication was undertaken at Semi-Conductor Laboratory of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in Chandigarh. The manufacturing of this motherboard was done at Bengaluru. Shakthi Moushik SoC will constitute the heart of an indigenously-developed motherboard called ‘Ardonyx 1.0.’

It is notable that Moushik’s predecessor - Risecreek (22nm chip designed in India and fabricated by Intel) is already in use in India’s strategic sector. Risecreek, an industry-level chip caters to the 100-350Mhz speed segment. Rimo, another variant in this series was also based on the 180nm technology and was designed and developed in India. “Now we have three processors ready and another class of processors is in the works. To serve higher computing speeds we can use the existing chips, combine them like building blocks and scale up” Prof Kamakoti added.