SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, Jan 30: An eight-member student team from the Department of Electronics Engineering at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad has been selected to design a semiconductor chip under the national One Tape-Out Per Student (1TOPS) programme, a major initiative to strengthen India’s semiconductor ecosystem.
Under the 1TOPS programme, 37 top student teams from across the country have been selected for the ambitious semiconductor chip design project. The IIT ISM Dhanbad team is one of the few chosen institutions to participate in this national-level initiative.
The selected student team includes Maharishi Sonwani, Soumyajit Samanta, Nitin Singhal, Amarkant, Aditya Ranjan, Dhananjay Jha, Krushn Surlakar, and Pradyumn Agrawal.
1TOPS Programme Aims to Build Industry-Ready Talent
An IIT ISM official said the 1TOPS programme is an initiative of the VLSI Society of India (VSI), designed to nurture industry-ready semiconductor talent in India and provide hands-on experience in chip design and fabrication.
Under the programme, VSI will offer financial assistance of up to ₹5 lakh for Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) chip tape-out, enabling students to build a complete silicon prototype.
RISC-V–Based SoC for Robotics and Drone Applications
As part of the initiative, Team VLSISM from IIT (ISM) Dhanbad will design and tape out an end-to-end, low-power and low-area RISC-V–based System-on-Chip (SoC) using 65 nm technology.
The proposed semiconductor chip is aimed at robotics and drone applications and will feature a Linux-capable RISC-V core integrated with a custom AI accelerator. This design will support real-time computer vision tasks, including CNN inference, offering efficient edge intelligence solutions.
Academic and Industry Mentorship
The student team will work under the guidance of Prof. Rajeev Kumar Ranjan, faculty mentor at IIT ISM Dhanbad. They will also receive industry mentorship from Sumit Kumar, Senior Manager – Design Verification Engineering at Analog Devices, who brings over 15 years of experience in SoC design and verification engineering.
IIT (ISM) Dhanbad acknowledged the leadership of Dr. Satya Gupta, CEO of the VLSI Society of India, and the VSI team for spearheading the 1TOPS initiative aimed at boosting India’s semiconductor and chip design ecosystem.