CHENNAI : Indian Institute of Technology - Madras (IIT-M) has collaborated with Thales, a French multinational company that designs and builds electrical systems, to produce processors with high global safety standards, said a statement from the institute on Monday. Thales and IIT-M have planned to take up joint research programmes in areas such as aerospace, space, transportation, security and defence. One of the most important objectives of the project is to design a SHAKTI RISC-V processor, with the highest safety-critical standards, the statement said.
Thales will draw on its expertise in the security and dependability of critical embedded systems to establish the best security practices for hardware development, the statement said adding, “The ultimate objective is to improve the security and dependability of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, embedded systems and machine learning implementations.”
IIT Madras researchers recently designed, fabricated and booted up India’s first indigenously-developed RISC-V Microprocessor — ‘Shakti’. The Shakti family of processors are targeted for mobile computing devices, embedded low power wireless systems and networking systems besides reducing reliance on imported microprocessors in communications and defence sectors. The microprocessor is on par with international standards.
Lead researcher, Prof Kamakoti Veezhinathan, Reconfigurable Intelligent Systems Engineering (RISE) Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras, said, “With the advent of more and more safety critical systems adopting electronics hardware for intricate control and monitoring, fault-tolerance and security features are of prime importance in next-generation processors.