IIT Madras, ISRO develop IRIS chip

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and ISRO have developed an indigenous microprocessor for space applications which can be used in command and control systems and other critical functions in outer space.

Key Points

• The Indigenous RISCV Controller for Space Applications (IRIS) chip was developed from SHAKTI processor baseline.
• The SHAKTI microprocessor project is led by IIT Madras Director V Kamakoti at Prathap Subrahmanyam Centre for Digital Intelligence and Secure Hardware Architecture (PSCDISHA) in Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
• SHAKTI is backed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under its ‘Digital India RISC-V’ initiative (DIRV).
• It aims to promote indigenous development of microprocessor based products that offer best-in-class security and visibility for users adopting RISC-V technology.
• The ISRO Inertial Systems Unit (IISU) in Thiruvananthapuram proposed the idea of a 64bit RISC-V-based Controller and collaborated with IIT Madras in defining the specifications and designing of the semiconductor chip.
• The SHAKTI class of systems are based on RISC-V, an open-source Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), for designing custom processors.

(Source: The Hindu)