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AJIT, a ‘Made in India’ Microprocessor
- CalChris 7y agoAJIT uses SPARC-V8 [1]. There's another project, the Shakti, which uses RISC-V [2]. [1] https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/meet-ajit-1st-entirely-made-in-india-chip-by-iit-bombay-and-it-will-power-our-satellites-365874.html https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/meet-ajit-1st-ent... [2] https://shakti.org.in/ https://shakti.org.in/
- pauljurczak 7y agoThanks. I was about to write about no need for yet another instruction set.
- gumby 7y agoWhy? There's still a lot of opportunity for advancement in this area.
- tyingq 7y agoSparc V8 would mean 32 bit. Which is somewhat curious, as servers are mentioned as a potential market in some of their material.
- tambourine_man 7y agoDoes anyone know the license for SPARC-V8? I would imagine it would be important to use an open ISA for such a strategic project.
- tyingq 7y agoIt's mostly open. There are some annual dues you have to pay, which range from very low for academia, to 5 figures/year for commerical manufacturers. https://sparc.org/faq/ https://sparc.org/faq/
- snvzz 7y agoThis is insane. With this in mind, why would they not use RISC-V? My better guess is that they started it a long time ago. Long enough for RISC-V not to be in usable condition. Hopefully, they'll redo the frontend.
- tyingq 7y agoAt scale, it's much cheaper than, say, ARM, where you pay a percentage of revenue based royalty.
- snvzz 7y agoYes, and it likely made sense if risc-v wasn't ready back when they started this project.
- nickpsecurity 7y agoSPARC already has an ecosystem thanks to Sun/Oracle. Gaisler did open implementation, Leon3. Sun/Oracle did T1 and T2. Registration to say it was SPARC compatible was only $99 when I looked at it years ago. My only question was why the heck isn't someone cranking them out for security or FOSS markets? Didn't get a chance to find out. Now we have RISC-V chips being developed with lots of companies getting behind it. Still easier to get ahold of SPARC chips, though. I'll also add that quite a few projects in academia used SPARC. OpenPiton being one that might justify using SPARC over RISC-V, esp if NUMA machine. :) http://parallel.princeton.edu/piton/# http://parallel.princeton.edu/piton/#
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y agoRISC-V is getting quite the ecosystem, though. IIRC, an effort made by Western Digital has made it possible to cross-compile stuff for RISC-V. Debian works just fine on RISC-V silicon. Right now the big thing seems to be getting real-time, hardware-supported JavaScript processing working so that the modern web works on it well.
- Symmetry 7y agoThere are actually a few open source SPARC implementations, including the first two Niagra revisions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC#Open_source_implementations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC#Open_source_implementati...
- sumanthvepa 7y agoThe key difference between the AJIT and Shakti seems to be the fabrication partner. AJIT is fabricated locally. Shakti was built at an Intel Fab using its 22nm process. They serve different purposes.
- shawnz 7y agoWhat makes the design tied to the fabrication partner though? Why couldn't this team have used the Shakti design?
- rwmj 7y agoBecause it's 64 bit and significantly complex, probably far too large for the 180nm process.
- microcolonel 7y agoThe SHAKTI they taped out with Intel 22nm FinFET is AFAIK conservatively an order of magnitude less complex than the Pentium III, which was successfully manufactured on 250nm and 180nm.
- rwmj 7y agoYes I was also quite surprised not to see SHAKTI mentioned here since it seems to be a far more advanced project. [Edit: After reading a bit more I see the aim of this project is to build local FAB experience, whereas SHAKTI seems to be about developing an Indian-designed server chip which is manufactured abroad. Both are independent and worthwhile goals.] Some of their team contacted me about porting Fedora/RISC-V to SHAKTI. (Unfortunately because SHAKTI doesn't support the Compressed extension, which both Fedora and Debian require, straight Fedora/RISC-V binaries won't run on SHAKTI and so the whole distro will need to be rebuilt).
- NeumannGod 7y agoHi rwmj, I think there's been some blur in the goal here. SHAKTI's aim is not to just build a Indian-based server chip manufactured abroad. For instance, if you see their tapeouts page (http://shakti.org.in/tapeouts.html http://shakti.org.in/tapeouts.html), you can see that they have taped out a chip in India as well with 180nm.. Also, Compressed instruction support has been supported on SHAKTI since and a beta version is now available publicly. The reason for that contact was to try to port Fedora on the already taped out chip which does not support compressed instructions.
- kcwyf 7y agoShould've called it PAJIT
- Zenst 7y agoWhy?
- krtkush 7y agoPajit is a racist/ derogatory way of addressing or stereotyping people of the Indian subcontinent. Similar to how people call Muslims Abdul etc.
- jimcsharp 7y agoIt also misses the mark because they were probably already going for a play on words with Ajit. Only, you know, without the hatred.
- tyingq 7y agoThe SBC could be the AjitPai.
- sametmax 7y agoWhy would using a regular human name for your compiler be racist. If somebody calls a compiler Mike, is it racist ? I mean, if a french guy create a board named Michel, I would find it pretty cool. Am I missing an english specific use of Pajit ?
- noxToken 7y agoIf a black person name's their son Tyrone, there's nothing wrong with that. It's a normal, human name. If someone walks up to a black guy that they've never met before and says, "Sup Tyrone?" that's racist. In the context of this, let's say that this was a group of black students from Morehouse, Tuskegee, or Florida A&M. It can be racist to say, "They should have named it Tyrone." Racism is all about context.
- patrickg_zill 7y agoIf compliant with the Sparcv8 ABI it would immediately have a lot of software and compiler support.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nickpsecurity 7y agoThey finally made a chip. It's on 180nm: a node that chipmakers were on 18 years ago. To put into perspective, even eASIC retired their offering that was on 90nm node (2004-2005). University students regularly do deep sub-micron. SiFive targets modern nodes with micro-style cores running faster than this. I'm probably just going to keep recommending modern alternatives.
- patrickg_zill 7y agoEverything you say is accurate, but, grad students have to start somewhere. If they can make a 65nm version that runs at say 500Mhz, that would be better. Remember that "real work" was done on desktops on a Sparcv8 chip that ran at 75Mhz or less.
- jfk13 7y agoI remember doing real work on CPUs such as a Z-80 at 4MHz. How our standards and expectations have changed...
- webmobdev 7y agoYeah, didn't Windows 95 run on 100 Mhz x86 processors? And Linux used to be blazing fast on it too (compared to today where Linux seems to be slower than Windows on the same hardware - yeah, I am looking at you Ubuntu).
- tyingq 7y ago"AJIT is currently able to run one instruction per clock cycle and at speeds between 70-120MHz, but they expect to achieve 400-500 MHz clock speeds in the next upgrade. It's built on a 180nm technology, though that will eventually be bumped up to 65nm." https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/meet-ajit-1st-entirely-made-in-india-chip-by-iit-bombay-and-it-will-power-our-satellites-365874.html https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/meet-ajit-1st-ent...
- rasz 7y agoIntel went up to 1.8 GHz on 180nm, just saying.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- geo999 7y agoonly needed to make a political statement, not really useful or competitive.
- sudhirj 7y agoThey cost $1.44 USD, or INR 100.
- geo999 7y agoit costs a lot more if you consider the cost of developing an actual product and not just a demo, it costs even more when you have to iron out bugs in the silicon ... when you buy a well established chip you pay not only for the silicon but for the maturity of the platform and ecosystem.
- pupdogg 7y agothat “a lot more” is relative to the country’s currency value and their average high tech sector salaries...in this case, it would cost “a lot more” to do the same in US vs India
- geezerjay 7y agoIndia disagrees. FTA: > A processor made in India offers more than just the cost benefits. It provides the country with autonomy and self-reliance in the electronics sector and reduces our dependence on technology imported from other parts of the world. It also ensures a secure system with no opportunity for any backdoor entry, thus preventing digital sabotage by other countries or malicious organisations.
- me551ah 7y agoIt's based on spark V8 which means it's only 32 bit. The blokes who built it say that it can used in servers. Why would some want to use a 100Mhz 32-bit chip on servers ! They say that the price would be around 100rs. At slightly less than that you can get the Allwinner A13 CPU, which is 1Ghz Cortex A8 ARM with a built in Mali GPU. Why anyone would want to use this in a commercial setting is beyond me. But it's a brilliant achievement on India's part, to make their first indigeniously developed processor.
- geezerjay 7y agoThe article makes it quite clear that the project is aimed at jump-starting India's industry. To achieve their goal, their first step was a relatively low-complexity project conducted by an inexperienced team. Although their PR effort is outlandish, I'm pretty sure they are aware of the limits of this sort of project.
- tyingq 7y agoThe driver seems to be this: "We are planning to use AJIT in the receivers being developed for NAVIC or IRNNS (The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System), an indigenous navigation system for the Indian subcontinent," said one of the processor's designers in a Reddit AMA (ask me anything). Article: https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/meet-ajit-1st-entirely-made-in-india-chip-by-iit-bombay-and-it-will-power-our-satellites-365874.html https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/meet-ajit-1st-ent... Reddit AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/bfrh0g/indias_first_indigenous_processor_developed_at/ https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/bfrh0g/indias_first_...
- bogomipz 7y agoDo you have another resource that mentions it being Sparc V8 based? I didn't see that in this article. Also doesn't Oracle own the Sparc ISA would they have to license this? Any insight into why they wouldn't have done with RISC-V instead of Sparc?
- sumanthvepa 7y agoMost people miss the real value of such projects. They serve two important purposes: First: they are intended to build a local pool of expertise and capability around semiconductor design and fabrication within the country. Second: although the chip itself is laughably underpowered compared to a modern ARM or Intel processor, it has one characteristic that makes it very interesting to the Indian government: they know exactly what is in the chip. No Intel Management Engine crap. No hardware backdoors. This could be a serious point in favour of the processor, if it is used in SCADA applications in sensitive industrial manufacturing processes.
- peteey 7y ago>No hardware backdoors Oh you sweet summer child
- dang 7y agoPlease don't do this here.
- mikepurvis 7y agoHow is the backdoor situation when you license ARM and implement it yourself on an FPGA? I'm assuming there are big sections that are still black boxes you just paste in, but I would think that would still help contain the potential exploitation vectors a lot— like, if you were willing to design the ethernet peripheral/stack yourself, you immediately eliminate a lot of unknowns.
- godelmachine 7y agoFPGA’s consume heck lotta power. Totally not Indian.
- PorterDuff 7y agoThat's a good question. I've worked on a couple of products with those and never thought about it. It seems to me that the interesting angle to this would be to avoid manufacture and instead spend your time on radical CPU designs on FPGA to be made from scratch later. No doubt that doesn't meet the needs of the folks in India.
- andybak 7y agoIt brings home what a high bar modern chip fabrication tech is. How many countries in the world have the resources and ability to manufacture a relatively modern CPU without outside assistance?
- amrrs 7y agoThere's an LTE chip that Zoho (backed Engineers built) https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/zoho-backed-team-creates-1st-desi-lte-chip/articleshow/67999956.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/...
- pks016 7y agoAMA by the designer of this processor in India subreddit. https://old.reddit.com/r/india/comments/bfrh0g/indias_first_indigenous_processor_developed_at/ https://old.reddit.com/r/india/comments/bfrh0g/indias_first_...
- vishnugupta 7y agoI interacted with the founder of Powai Labs back when I was a master's student there, working as a sysadmin :-). Good on them!
- otabdeveloper1 7y ago> AJIT Where is the 'P'??
- bfrydl 7y agoIf they put this in a new Rasberry Pi model, would it be an Ajit Pi? I'll be here all week, folks.
- maslam 7y agoBoooo. Your jokes are bad and you should feel bad! :-D
- stcredzero 7y agoThey need to add some features from the Transmeta processor, using the technique of rewriting code on the fly. That way, this could also be "A JIT" processor.
- spacesuitman2 7y agoModerators, I'm attempting to flag this post, but I do not see the flag on this post's page.
- DanBC 7y ago(I'm not a mod) There's a small karma threshold before the [flag] link appears. I think it's about 30.
- throwvatars 7y agoSad to see this as the most popular HN comment. HN~Reddit ?
- cdelsolar 7y agoI forgot that humor wasn't allowed on HN.
- purplezooey 7y agocame here to see if somebody said this, thanks
- tiuPapa 7y agoWith the type of comments here, I think they also expect everyone to start learning to program with writing a kernel instead of a hello world. Yes, it is underpowered and relies on old tech, but I guess if they just want to test the waters for a commercial chip industry, it makes much more sense to start with something small that can check the infrastructure, instead of going for a 7nm chip on their first try.
- mywittyname 7y agoThere's also a huge market for small, low-cost, low-complexity chips. Even if they produce something that's underpowered compared to the competition, it still may be perfectly suitable for a kitchen appliance or similar.
- ucaetano 7y agoIn the first stage, AJIT has been manufactured in the government-owned Semiconductor Laboratory (SCL), Chandigarh, with a technology that offers the smallest building block of the size 180 nanometers. The researchers also plan to commercially manufacture the processor using more advanced techniques that provide the smallest building block of size 65 nm or 45 nm, which is the current state of the art. For reference, 180nm was state of the art 20 years ago, and 45nm was state of the art some 12 years ago.
- sanguy 7y agoAmazing they've managed to get this done despite all the government corruption and bureaucracy. But let's see if it actually gets manufactured and widely deployed. India's government is the countries own worst enemy....
- singhrk 7y agoAny evidences on corruption or bureaucracy? Or, its just an opinion. Last few years India has specifically worked on corruption and bureaucracy. Specially in ease of doing business it has gone up from being at 100+ position to 53 in last 10 years. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index Indian government can definitely improve (and so can every governments of world). But since 1991 all Indian governments are taking slow steps in the right direction, with increase transparency and lesser corruption and bureaucracy (opening up the economy, digitizing governments, simplifying taxes, right to information act)
- chimpburger 7y agoYou posted the evidence in your own comment. India is far from the top rank (just above Mexico) and last year they were ranked near the bottom.
- primitivesuave 7y agoI am an Indian expat and can rant endlessly on government corruption in India. Most Indians living in the US are well-aware of the graft in their mother country but many Indians in India choose not to acknowledge it. A truly remarkable corrupt event occurred recently - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetis...
- pkphilip 7y agoIndian government is still extremely corrupt. Carefully managed PR campaigns are making it seem like things have improved considerably, but the fact remains that things are still pretty bad on the ground.
- mahranch 7y agoSlightly off topic; My favorite clothing brand is made in India; Robert Graham. Allegedly, they were the only place that could make what the founders wanted. He'd been searching for nearly a decade till he found a manufacturer in India that showed/proved what he wanted could be done. Sure, some of the clothing from RG can be a bit, gaudy, it's the more subdued stuff I'm into. Most importantly, build quality is literally off the charts. I have shirts from RG that I've had for 4 years that still look brand new, even the collar is still crisp and looks new.
- rl3 7y agohttp://www.robertgraham.us/men/tees.html http://www.robertgraham.us/men/tees.html $298 T-Shirts, ha. At that price I'm surprised they don't try to upsell a weave that affords limited ballistic protection.
- ryanlol 7y ago$128 T-Shirts, $298 for one with a fancy beaded graphic. For materials fancier than cotton you can easily spend 10x that, https://us.loropiana.com/en/p/Man/Shirts/Girocollo-FAF6689?colorCode=WH59 https://us.loropiana.com/en/p/Man/Shirts/Girocollo-FAF6689?c...
- rpd9803 7y ago(•_•) Oh no, how much longer before we can expect an.. ( •_•)>⌐■-■ Ajit Pai?
- n_t 7y agoThey specifically designed it for use within India's GPS satellites and probably there too had very limited scope and usage which would explain it being under-powered.