Union Minister of Electronics & Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday launched the "Swadeshi Microprocessor Challenge-Innovate Solutions for Aatmrbhar Bharat" to provide impetus to the ecosystem of start-up, innovation and research in the country.
"IIT Madras and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) have developed two microprocessors named SHAKTI (32 bit) and VEGA (64 bit), respectively using Open Source Architecture under the aegis of Microprocessor Development Programme of Ministry of Electronics and IT. 'Swadeshi Microprocessor Challenge-Innovate Solutions for Aatmrbhar Bharat' seeks to invite innovators, startups and students to use these microprocessors to develop various technology products," the Ministry of Electronics & IT said in a press note.
"As one of the concrete steps towards realising the ambition of self-reliance and a momentous stride towards 'Atmrbhar Bharat', this initiative is aimed at not only meeting India's future requirements of strategic and industrial sectors but also has the potential to mitigate the issues of security, licensing, technology obsolescence and most crucially cutting dependency on imports," it added.
The "Swadeshi Microprocessor Challenge" is part of the series of proactive, pre-emptive and graded measures taken by the Ministry of Electronics and IT to spur the technology-led innovation ecosystem in the country and staying at the forefront of digital adoption. Open to students at all levels and startups, the challenge demands contestants to not only tinker with these Swadeshi Processor IPs and facilitate them with innovating the frugal solutions for societal needs but also make available the entire home-grown ecosystem around Swadeshi Processors to develop the complex designs for catering to both global and domestic requirements in near future.
Financial support to the tune of Rs 4.30 crore at various stages of the challenge for developing the hardware prototype and incubating a start-up is being offered.
The challenge spread over 10 months kick-starts with the registration process at https://innovate.mygov.in on August 18, 2020, and culminates in June 2021, with an opportunity for 100 semi-finalists to win a total Rs 1 crore of awards, 25 finalists to win a total Rs 1 crore of awards and top 10 teams entering the finale will get the seed fund of total Rs 2.30 crore and 12 months incubation support.
( With inputs from ANI )