India to help 85,000 students design semiconductor chips within 5 years

New Delhi, Nov 26 The government on Tuesday said it is creating a conducive environment for the semiconductor design community across the country by providing thousands of students direct access to the national chip design infrastructure, and help them design semiconductor chips within five years.

ChipIN Centre, one of the largest facilities established at C-DAC, offers an extensive range of semiconductor design workflows and solutions, striving to bring national chip design infrastructure directly to the semiconductor design community.

It is a centralised facility which hosts the most advanced tools for the entire chip design cycle (going up to 5 nm or advanced node).

According to the IT Ministry, currently engaged with more than 20,000 students at over 250 academic institutions and entrepreneurs at 45 startup projects, ChipIN Centre aims to provide access of state-of-the-art EDA (electronic design automation) tools to 85,000 students at B.Tech, M.Tech and PhD level to design semiconductor chips within five years.

German multi-national company Siemens has also extended the current usage scope of its EDA tools from 120 colleges to 250+ colleges under Chips to Start-up (C2S) Programme and latest powerful Veloce hardware-assisted verification solution from Siemens, to the companies approved under the design-linked scheme (DLI) scheme.

“We were receiving the huge demand from students, researchers, faculty members and entrepreneurs across the country in respect of further enhancing and extending the EDA and design solutions from Siemens to more organisations,’ said Sunita Verma, Group Coordinator (R&D in Electronics and IT), IT Ministry.

The enhanced support from Siemens at the ChipIN Centre will play a crucial role in fulfilling the vision of turning India into a semiconductor powerhouse, she added.

Veloce from Siemens comprising the following main components – Veloce Strato hardware & OS, Veloce Apps and Veloce Protocol Solutions, has a compute facility of 128 CPU cores and capacity of 640 million gates.

“India today presents a significant opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs and researchers to be at the forefront of designing and redefining the semiconductor systems, devices and products of the future,” said Ruchir Dixit, Vice President and Country Manager, EDA, Siemens Digital Industries Software.

Siemens is proud to extend its participation in the ‘Chips to Start-up (C2S) Programme’ by expanding access of its state-of-the-art EDA technology solutions to 250 educational institutions across India, he noted.