There are only a few countries with companies that can design and/or manufacture chips. Some of the ones that come to my mind off the bat include: the US, China, Taiwan, Japan, France, and Italy. But India did not… That’s until recently as IIT Bombay conceived AJIT the first Indian microprocessor, which was then manufactured at the Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL) in Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab and Haryana states.
Details are limited. For example, I’m unable to find out which architecture was used by the processor, but we do know it’s a microcontroller class 32-bit microprocessor clocked at 70 to 120 MHz with an arithmetic logic unit, a memory management unit, a floating point unit, as well as a hardware debugger unit.
The sample pictured above has been manufactured with a 180nm process, but they plan to move to a 65nm process eventually. Tools used for development include AHIR-V2 which has been released in Github. Some of the applications include set-top boxes (not as media chip obviously), control panels for automation systems, traffic light controllers or robotic systems. AJIT should cost around 100 rupees ($1.44) once mass production starts.
It will take a while before the Indian semiconductor sector takes off (if it does), but at least they are building the talent pool, and over time this should allow India to become more independent for critical applications like military or utilities.
You’ll find more details on Reddit (1) and (2), and in an article published on Research Matters.
Via Hacker News
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You forgot about Ireland, Israel, Korea, Singapore and Malaysia…
Full list here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants
Having a fab is not the same as designing and developing a chip locally. You can setup a fab anywhere as long as you have the people to run it but when it comes to designing a chip independent from any existing ones, it’s completely a different matter. Not many countries have done or able to do that.
>but when it comes to designing a chip independent from any existing ones,
>it’s completely a different matter. Not many countries have done or able to do that.
People from universities all over the world have designed simple (presumably, it only runs at 120MHz) chips like this in FPGAs for ages.
Israel been in semiconductors since the 60s and have been known to do independent designs occasionally.
It’s also incorrect to say you can fab everywhere. Different fab processes favor different logic designs due to how the different silicon N/P layers are doped and set. So, the same logic design in two different fabs could vary in operating temperatures and maximum frequencies despite technically being on the same node. Sometimes the compilers solve this rather well. Sometimes you need to review the logic itself.
The reason we don’t notice this is because companies typically time their fab switch around node reductions so they’ll compensate for the more wasteful design with more transistors. It’s the whole tick tock thing…
I just meant to list the ones that came to my mind naturally. South Korea should have come though, but somehow I forgot about it.
I don’t know any Singapore company that designs and manufactures chips.
Creative Labs/ZiiLabs as far as chip design companies and there are plenty of foundries there, such as Global Foundries, SSMC, etc.
I forgot about ZiiLabs, and did not know they/Creative Labs were Singapore based. Long time I had not seen news about them. The products page on their website has not been updated since 2012, but I can see they are still in the news litigating patents: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-09/creative-tech-unit-settles-patent-infringement-lawsuits-in-u-s
Well, Creative Labs also makes audio chips, not sure they’re made in Singapore, but still designed there and they come out with new stuff every so often. Not sure what happened to ZiiLabs, it seems like they’ve just become a patent troll these days…
https://www.creative.com/oem/products/chips.asp
Isn’t ARM a British company?
ARM is owned by Softbank which is a Japanese company.
Yes, the money is Japanese, but the chips are designed by Brits?
The money is probably mostly Saudi. The chip design might still be done in the UK but a company like that isn’t going to limit itself to local talent (especially when the UK isn’t interested in actually developing any) so they’ll be shipping people in from where ever. If ARM had strong ties to Britain and it was important to keep it that way the UK government wouldn’t have allowed it’s sale to a Japanese company that was holding some Saudi prince’s chequebook.
Arm does not manufacture any chips (except some engineering samples for their test platforms maybe)
But at least they can DESIGN something?
🙂
I understand they provide Arm cores and other IP block for silicon vendors to design their own chips. But yes, they design “IP”, that’s something 🙂
I believe the Japanese SoftBank bought them a while-back and then sold the control stakes of the Chinese subsidiary to an unknown Chinese national / group.
AMD’s x86 are in similar circumstances which is why RISC-V is suddenly looking so appealing to western companies.
ARM has so far not made hardware. They make IP designs, which other companies then license from ARM.
What about the Netherlands (NXP, formerly part of Philips).
And of course Dutch-founded ASML also comes in handy when producing high density chips 🙂
ISA is SPARC V8
Ah OK. I saw a joke about RISC and sparks in reddit, but I did not connect the dots at the time 🙂
So it is made at 180nm, like the Shakti.
India does have another CHIP programme names SHAKTI, see – https://shakti.org.in/ and if possible blog about it 🙂
Hi guys.
From digging through the Reddit AMA, the ISA is SPARC-V8