
An ARM killer from IIT-M? - prando
https://factordaily.com/india-chip-design-shakti-iit-madras/
======
ChuckMcM
To be honest though building a processor these days is not exactly difficult.
That is especially true if you start with someone else's ISA and they have
already created a GCC or LLVM back end for it. I was at Sun during the
development of SPARC and as part of the Systems group we got to see a lot of
the trade offs up front but these days transistors are not nearly so scarce.
If you stick to 30 - 50Mhz for your first round you can simulate pretty much
power on to shell prompt in a reasonable amount of time. Then there are the
process specific issues that TSMC or Global Foundries or whomever will help
you with translating your HDL into their most reliable node (probably 45nm or
90nm at the moment), then you'll build a test chip and it will likely do
everything you want it to do and it will cost 10x what an equally powerful ARM
chip will do, so you will really really want to use your chip instead of that
one if you're going to design it into something. And that something has to be
popular enough that you sell at least a million of them, otherwise you're
going to eat a lot of Nonrecurring engineering (NRE) cost.

It is certainly possible, but it is a long game and you have to survive the
early years. Go back and read the history of ARM (and Acorn), Intel (and IBM),
Motorola (and Sun and Apple), and Power PC (and Cisco). Then read the history
of the Z8000, the NS32032, the AMD88000, and the TI 9900. When you look at the
history from where we sit today you will see that building a new CPU is the
easiest thing in the world, staying alive until it is relevant is
exceptionally difficult and requires quite a bit of luck in addition to good
design.

I wish these guys a lot of luck, I would love to see a fully open architecture
be even half as successful as ARM has been. They have to walk into this with
their eyes open though, it is not going to be easy.

~~~
pedroaraujo
That is simply not true.

Building a CPU can be "easy" if you want to build something that works. If you
want to build something that is power efficient and, at the same time, quite
performant, then the complexity of the problem escalates very quickly.

Sticking at 30-50 MHz? What is this even supposed to mean? Digital hardware
design hardly takes clock speeds into consideration, except during physical
implementation in the later stages of the hardware development.

TSMC or Global Foundries will help translating HDL into a reliable node? Do
you even know what you are talking about? This "translation" that you refer to
is called synthesis and physical implementation and it is done by the design
house. The foundry only provided the logic cells their technology and they
manufacture the final die that is going to ship on the product.

The CPUs you mentioned were simple micro-controllers, they were not designed
for heavy processing tasks, they don't even have a branch predictor which is
something fundamental to have some significant performance.

Nothing about your post made any shred of sense in terms of hardware design.

~~~
inteleng
I'm not sure why pedroaraujo is being downvoted other than in response to his
criticism of HN topcommenter Chuck McManis. Pedro is correct; toy CPUs , like
what Chuck mentioned building, are so trivial that undergraduate students can
build functioning models of them in a few days or hours. They are quite
literally thousands of times less complex than the CPUs (even RISC arches)
that are discussed in the article.

I also concur with Pedro on the clock speed part - clock speed has absolutely
nothing to do with your hardware design until you have written all the HDL,
simulated its behavioral characteristics, actually synthesized the logic,
completed the analog and I/O components of the design, and are actually
preparing for tapeout. There's a reason only AMD and Intel make large CPUs for
the consumer market, and it's not because college students are too busy.

I'm going to fade into the grey background for this, but ChuckMcM's comment is
yet another disappointing step toward the total calcification of this forum.
It's not a commentary on the article; it simply states, lazily, and
ignorantly, that whatever it is they're attempting at IIT-M, it can't be too
hard. What an an incredibly condescending and blasé thing to say, especially
on a public forum where what you say can't be erased.

I'm actually quite glad to see another implementation of RISC-V from outside
the US. The horde of nearly identical ARM cores on the market is terribly
uninspiring.

~~~
PinguTS
It seems both of you haven't read the article itself. The new CPU design is
not about high-end CPU you expect from Intel or AMD. It is about CPUs for the
IoT. We are talking about Cortex-M alike CPUs you find in micro-controllers
from Infineon, NXP, Renesas, and alike. BTW there is competition to the ARM
design. It is the micro-controllers from NXP former Freescale, which have
their own CPU design heavily used in automotive.

~~~
pedroaraujo
The comment applies to both high-end CPUs and to microcontrollers as well.
Power and performance are even more critical on a microcontroller than on an
high-end CPU.

~~~
dkersten
And yet you yourself said:

> The CPUs you mentioned were simple micro-controllers, they were not designed
> for heavy processing tasks, they don't even have a branch predictor which is
> something fundamental to have some significant performance.

So it seems his comparison was fair, after all? Given that the article is
about microcontrollers too.

------
throw3192312
It's definitely to be welcomed, but India barely has the kind of interests,
state-apparatus or companies that'd want something like this to succeed. India
neither has Baidu, nor Tencent, nor Wechat. They have Flipkart, which is
barely an Alibaba, and is on a long drawn collision course towards merging
with Amazon. The startups I've seen generally seem to target foreign markets,
or to service people who service foreign markets; this is inherently a tiny
subset of India's population.

Considering the 'prestige' and money that comes with working in the US, I'd be
very surprised if the country can ever accumulate enough talent to do anything
fundamentally significant (esp. since all of the relevant Education/Industry
is entirely Anglophone).

I also feel there is generally a lot of self-flattering that goes on, often
for this very reason. I'm old enough to remember the embarrassment that was to
be 'India's answer to OLPC' (also conceived at an IIT of note).

~~~
wsxcde
Why do Baidu and Tencent count, but Infosys and TCS not count? Each of these
have companies with >10B USD of revenue, so it's not like the Chinese
companies are any larger. And don't tell me, it's because of the difference
between product and service companies, because that is meaningless distinction
from the perspective of a hardware-marker. They all need hardware to run on
and arguably a service company needs more.

> _Considering the 'prestige' and money that comes with working in the US, I'd
> be very surprised if the country can ever accumulate enough talent to do
> anything fundamentally significant (esp. since all of the relevant
> Education/Industry is entirely Anglophone)._

That was true maybe 10/20 years ago. Right now, thanks to Trump and
Republicans, the US is much less attractive destination, especially for top-
tier researchers. NSF funding rates are in the single digit percentage range,
every year seems to see a new assault from state-level republicans on state
university systems. Rising xenophobia and white nationalism obviously don't
help the cause.

The situation in India is way better. There is more money available for
research: the Shakti project is one example but many other big centers are
being funded in various "institutes of national importance." There is a bi-
partisan commitment to increasing funding and hiring for Indian research and
there is a growing talent pool emerging from the non-IIT undergraduate
colleges.

Twenty years ago, every R1 university in the US was better than every
university in India. Now, once you get past the top-10 or 15, beyond the
Berkeleys, MITs, Princetons and maybe Purdues, it's not at all clear that it
is a good idea for a young assistant professor to go to say Virgina Tech over
IISc or IIT Bombay. And in fact, these Indian institutes are consistently
hiring people who would have been a shoo-in for a faculty position at places
like VT.

~~~
signa11
> Why do Baidu and Tencent count, but Infosys and TCS not count? Each of these
> have companies with >10B USD of revenue...

umm, probably because both of these companies are not exactly known for their
cutting edge r&d.

~~~
wsxcde
On the contrary, both Infosys Research and the TCS Innovation Lab are
organically growing research labs who have been steadily producing quality
scholarly work for some years now.

I'm not aware of anything of note coming from Baidu research. All they've done
is a splashy celebrity hire of Andrew Ng, which is the exact opposite of how
one would set up a serious research organization.

------
gsmadhusudan
As the lead architect of Shakti and the guy who helped kick-start the project,
I figure I am owed my 2 cents !

1\. We never positioned it as an ARM killer ! That was the imagination of the
reporter who wrote the article.

2\. Shakti is not a state only project. Parts of Shakti are funded by the
govt, these relate to cores and SoCs needed by the Govt. The defense and
strategic sector procurement is huge, runs in the 10s of billions of USD.There
is significant funding in terms of manpower, tools and free foundry shuttles
provided by the private sector. In fact Shakti has more traction with the
private sector than the govt sector in terms of immediate deployments.

3\. The CPU eco-system including ARM's is a bit sclerotic. It is not the lic
cost that is the problem, it is the inherent lack of flexibility in the model.

4\. Shakti is not only a CPU. Other components include a new interconnect
based on SRIO, GenZ with our extensions accompanied by open source silicon, a
new NVMe+ based storage standard again based on open source SSD controller
silicon (using Shakti cores of course), open source Rust based MK OS for
supporting tagged ISAs for secure Shakti variants, fault tolerant variants for
aerospace and ADAS applications, ML/AI accelerators based on our AI research
(we are one of the top RL ML labs around). 4\. the Shakti program will also
deliver a whole host of IPs including the smaller trivial ones and also as
needed bigger blocks like SRIO, PCIe and DDR4. All open source of course. 5\.
We are also doing our own 10G and 25G PHYs 6\. A few startups will come out of
this but that can wait till we have a good open source base. 7\. The standard
cores coming out of IIT will be production grade and not research chips.

And building a processor is still tough these days. Try building a 16 core,
quad wide server monster with 4 DDR4 channels, 4x25G I/O ports, 2 ports for
multi-socket support. All connected via a power optimized mesh fabric. Of
course you have to develop the on-chip and off-chip cache coherency stuff too
! 8\. And yes we are in talks with AMD for using the EPYC socket. But don't
think they will bite.

Just ignore the India bit and look at what Shakti aims to achieve, then you
will get a better picture. I have no idea how successful we will be and I
frankly do not care. What we will achieve (and have to some extent already) is
\- create a critical mass of CPU architects in India \- create a concept to
fab eco-system ind India for designing any class of CPUs \- add a good dose of
practical CPU design knowhow into the engineering curriculum \- become one of
the top 5 CPU arch labs around

Shakti is already going into production. The first design is actually in the
control system of an experimental civilian nuclear reactor. IIT is within the
fallout zone so you can be sure we will get the design right. If you want any
further info, mail me. My email is on the Shakti site. G S Madhusudan

~~~
gsmadhusudan
Also everyone is welcome to review our code and to contribute to the codebase.
It is an open source project. IIT-M incubated it but we want it to be
community driven. FPGA based dev packages should be announced by jan , based
on standard low cost FPGA boards. Dev parts based on ASIC parts will probably
be announced 2nd quarter of next year assuming Feb/March tapeout.We would be
glad to help other universities do their own tapeouts. One of the goals of
Shakti is also to demystify the backend process.

~~~
ikamthania
Congratulation on the project. Where can one find the source? Is this the one?
[https://bitbucket.org/casl/shakti_public](https://bitbucket.org/casl/shakti_public)

~~~
gsmadhusudan
Yes, we will update the C Class next month since our private line has a lot of
foundry specific code that needs to be removed. The I class needs more work
but the design is in place. It will also move to quad issue and would be a
Cortex A72/75 class core. More importantly the basic slow IPs, UART, I2C,
quad/Octal SPI, SDRAM controller, JTAG, DMA, PLIC will be FPGA and silicon
proven and production quality. Will be very useful to other developers (non
RISC-V also) as would the AXI bus.

------
sitkack
These folks have no qualms with ARM. They are building their own chips using
the RISC-V ISA. This literally has _nothing_ to do with ARM or Intel.

The ISA isn't the hard part in building a chip, the building the chip part is.
The thing they have going for using an existing ISA is that they get kernel
and toolchain support.

They have many millions in support in the project and see all the reasons why
they will succeed. What would be awesome is if AMD gave them assistance in
getting their parts running in EPYC sockets.

------
ksec
The Actual ARM license and IP, is relatively tiny in overall cost of the chip.
It is a very small amount of money for time to market and ecosystem.

ARMv8 ( Specifically the aarch64 part ) is like a clean start. I doubt RISC-V
offer any advantage, especially we should now know the uArch is only tiny part
of the equation, the implementation matters a lot.

Apart from the fear of lock in or ARM suddenly hike the price 100x, what
exactly is the benefits and motives for RISC-V?

Or is this more of NIH Syndrome?

~~~
gsmadhusudan
The Risc-V ISA is far more modular and extensible. Also we needed the 128 bit
support for our NVM storage research and single address space OS work. No MMU,
T-ISA based security, VIVT caches. Other govt projects do have ARM licenses,
we chose not to go that way for purely technical reasons. Our lab does have
academic collaboration with ARM.

------
CaptainHaddock
Good to see these fellas in action. It is nice to see that India is trying to
set up a chip manufacturing ecosystem. There will be a lot of pitfalls though.
From my long stint in chip design, I predict that the initial phases will be
difficult. Like, the first few efforts might be defective/have odd timing
bugs/power/reset problems and it will be very discouraging and frustrating. If
they can push through this phase, then I can already imagine India's rise in
the IoT/strategic or whatever industry they are targeting. I also hope that
this effort pushes the government/private sector to set up fabs in India. Stay
strong, all of us are bidding for you guys. A quick lookup on the internet
shows that SHAKTI is from R.I.S.E group. We are waiting to see you rise!

------
tonmoy
Glad to see open source catching up to pro proprietary in this space.

I’m assuming all their code is in this repo:
[https://bitbucket.org/casl/](https://bitbucket.org/casl/)

------
cvs268
Very inspiring news! :)

Looking forward to the day when we would be able to run popular open source SW
frameworks like NodeMCU and Linux on open hardware like this.

Submitted my first PR to the bitbucket repo (a minor one)
[https://bitbucket.org/casl/shakti_public/pull-
requests/1](https://bitbucket.org/casl/shakti_public/pull-requests/1)

------
happy-go-lucky
> The landscape is full of thick trees that have set down roots for decades.
> Bats, deers, and monkeys, seemingly comfortable with the few thousand
> bicycle-riding students, academics, and staff on campus, are easy to spot.
> The air, thanks to a recent bout of rains in Chennai, is as good as a hill
> station

In addition to the above description, a picture should have been inserted
above or below the paragraph.

~~~
gsmadhusudan
[http://iglc2018.com/images/iit/4.jpg](http://iglc2018.com/images/iit/4.jpg)
[https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-
qimg-2200d147343aa841a43a07...](https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-
qimg-2200d147343aa841a43a07c3a3dc88fe-c)
[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OgX4b2N9a8E/S7OVv7jxhmI/AAAAAAAAAh...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OgX4b2N9a8E/S7OVv7jxhmI/AAAAAAAAAhY/E3E1YmXyrDM/s1600/IMG_1989.JPG)
[http://www.mbaskool.com/2013_images/photography/landscape_na...](http://www.mbaskool.com/2013_images/photography/landscape_nature/Arun%20G-%20DoMS-%20IIT%20Madras%20-family%20time.jpg)

We are one of the last refuges of the endangered black buck. The spotted deer
and bonnet macaques are more common in India. Odd that a university campus in
the middle of a city is a refuge. The pic is that of an albino black buck, an
even rarer mutant.

~~~
krylon
Wow!

I am happy when I can see a kestrel or a roe deer from my office. It must be
amazing to work in such a beautiful scenery!

~~~
gsmadhusudan
Everything has to be monkey proofed, going to the refreshment room when a
monkey gang is around is like running the gauntlet ! We are talking really
aggressive simians. But totally worth it, I could spend hours watching the
monkeys. Surprised that we do not have a simian cognition research group on
campus. The slender loris are really beautiful too but I have never seen them.

[http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/multimedia/dynamic/02331...](http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/multimedia/dynamic/02331/BLink_KalyanVarmaD_2331614f.jpg)

Now if I could get the monkeys to learn bluespec ...

------
snvzz
Did I miss the privileged ISA becoming standard?

Sure they don't want to release a chip using the draft.

------
fithisux
It reminds me of the Loongson/Godson effort.

------
microcolonel
Glad to hear that they'll be taping out one of the Shakti chips so soon. Can't
wait to see what comes of the higher-end server (or workstation, if you're me)
chips.

That said...

> _“The capitalist computing bourgeoisie want to enslave us all with
> proprietary processing architectures, but the proletariat eventually
> produces its own processor alternative – an ISA for and by the people, where
> instruction sets aren’t subject to the whim of the royalty-driven class, and
> where licensing fees don’t oppress the workers’ BOMs (bill of materials),”
> writes Kevin Morris in the Electronics Engineering journal, lending colour
> and gravitas to what’s at stake in the processor industry._

Comparing RISC-V to communism is pretty grody. RISC-V is _precisely_ a
capitalist revolution, shedding a layer of state protection of the ISA from
the market, and unleashing the greed, passion, and proprietary zeal of the
world on the task of bringing designs to market.

~~~
CalChris
RISC-V was developed by the state, in particular, by UC Berkeley, a public
school. And IIT Madras is also another public school. So again, a branch of
the Indian state is developing this Shakti processor.

There's really nothing capitalist about this at all.

~~~
microcolonel
I'm sure Bluespec, TSMC, SiFive, NXP, Samsung, Qualcomm, Microsemi, Micron,
Huawei, and NVIDIA don't think of it like that, the RISC-V foundation is also
not UC Berkeley. Also, strictly speaking the UC system ain't the state, if
they were, they would not be allowed to generate copyrights from work produced
by employees. IBM at least partially (if not completely) covered the
fabrication of the original UCB RISC-V chips.

Though I'd generally agree in the case of IIT Madras, which is specifically
engaging in a state effort to reduce import dependence in microelectronics
(especially for defense and national infrastructure).

~~~
CalChris
Strictly speaking, the UC System _is_ the state. That IBM funded some of
RISC-V doesn’t make RISC-V a capitalist product nor does TSMC manufacturing
some silicon. The US Government and the University of California can claim
intellectual property rights including patents, copyrights and trademarks.
That SiFive is incorporated to exploit RISC-V as was Sun Microsystems to
exploit 4.2 changes nothing.

~~~
microcolonel
The U.S. government can not claim copy rights on work produced by government
employees. Read the statute before commenting on it, especially if you're
using it as a point of disagreement.

The one way the U.S. government can come to own copy rights is by purchasing
them from original rights holders. No copy right exists for any work of a U.S.
government employee.

~~~
CalChris
You may wish to read 15 USC § 290e. There are other exceptions.

------
0xbear
ARM can’t be killed at this s point. Positioning themselves as ARM killer
would not be the wisest move on anyone’s part.

~~~
sillysaurus3
One way to dethrone the competition might be to focus on openness:

 _There are also security reasons for wanting to make a processor for India.
“We don’t know really whether the processor we are getting from outside is
trustworthy. Is it secure?” asks Kamakoti. “Suppose I want variants of a
processor, for different needs – not just strategic, even civilian needs – I
have to basically rely on the processor available to me, and fit my
application to that. It is something like I bought the slipper and I am
cutting my feet to fit into it.”_

~~~
0xbear
But in the case of ARM, you _do_ know, if you manufacture it yourself. ARM
licenses intellectual property, not sells chips. Once you buy a license, you
can inspect it and make sure it doesn’t have the bits you don’t like.

~~~
gsmadhusudan
That means I have to develop all the code from scratch anyway. the arch lic
just gets me a ISA spec doc.Might as well start with another ISA that is free.
But the issue is bigger. Shakti is also an exercise in using a high level HDL.
We would not exist but for Bluespec, we really get a 6x to 10x productivity
increase over Verilog. I also get the ability to do true formal proving of the
correctness of my code. There is a reason why DARPA hose bluespec for their
secure processor work.

~~~
TickleSteve
No, an ARM license gets you the implementation of a core in source form. You
are free to modify it if needed, as many licensees do.

~~~
monocasa
Depends on the license.

------
dingo_bat
These guys will have to drop out and start a funded company if they want this
tech to go anywhere. I don't expect IIT-M to be able to manufacture and sell
the finished design.

~~~
vikiomega9
I'm not aware of universities doing manufacturing and selling finished design,
they more or less license IP.

