BHUBANESWAR: IIT-Bhubaneswar became the 31st institute of the country to set up a centre for chip designing and manufacturing under the Chips to Startup (C2S) initiative of the Ministry of Electronics and IT. Union Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw on Sunday announced the approval of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the project.
The Chips to Startup (C2S) programme aims at training 85,000 qualified engineers in the area for large-scale integration and embedded system design. It will help develop 175 application specific integrated circuits, working prototypes of 20 systems on chips (SoCs) and IP core repository over a period of five years.
Vaishnaw said the collaboration with IIT-BBS will be a step towards leapfrogging into the Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) space by inculcating the culture of SoC/system level design at bachelors, masters and research level and act as a catalyst for growth of startups involved in fabless design.
“There has been an exponential growth in electronics production in the country. This is fuelling the demand for microprocessors and chips. Most of such units are located in cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Gurugram. We want to develop the institutions in tier-II/III cities to take part in the mission,” he said.
The programme would be implemented at about 100 academic institutions/R&D organisations, including IITs, NITs, IIITs and government/private colleges across the country. The Indian Railways and the IIT-BBS will soon join hands for developing new technologies for joining of thick rails, rail joint integrity testing, fatigue life estimation of engineering components, vibration and dynamic control.
The Minister also expressed his willingness to establish a Centre of Excellence (CoE) on 5G Spectrum at IIT-BBS. He asked the students to identify 10 application areas and uses of 5G spectrum for getting the approval. “I told the students to take this as a challenge and submit their innovative proposals. IIT-BBS can be developed as a CoE, if the students can come up with some of the best uses of the 5G spectrum,” he said. Registrar of IIT-Bhubaneswar, Debaraj Rath said this is a big opportunity to prove the mettle and make Odisha a part of the semiconductor hub of the country. “Two more important projects are in the offing and we hope our students will excel in innovation,” he added.
The Minister interacted with the faculty members and students about the ongoing research activities on integrated circuit (IC) design, semiconductor technology and railways engineering. A brief presentation of the academics, research and development activities of IIT-BBS was presented by Dean Academics Prof NC Sahu. Chairman of Board of Governors of IIT-BBS, Dr RP Singh was also present.