
AJIT, a ‘Made in India’ Microprocessor - mkbkn
https://researchmatters.in/news/welcome-ajit-%E2%80%98made-india%E2%80%99-microprocessor
======
sumanthvepa
Most 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.

~~~
mikepurvis
How 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.

~~~
petra
Long ago i remember briefly reading some research articles about FPGA
vulnerabilities. Don't know if it's practical, but people designing critical
system are justifiably paranoid.

~~~
penagwin
The ultimate security perspective is to assume that you're defending against
an unlimited resource nation-state that's specifically targetting you.

Obviously, there is no such thing as "complete security" but you can try to
secure what you can, that's why people concern themselves with what may seem
like unlikely revenues of attack.

I mean depending on how critical your system is, it can really change how you
operate. Get a virus on your computer? Some people use anti-virus, and when
that says it "removed the virus" they're happy. Other people would only be
happy with a complete OS reinstall from a fresh ISO made on a different
machine as acceptable. Still other's would require new hardware, it's possible
(and has been seen in the wild) to reflash the ROM of the motherboard, or
potentially many other low-level chips through software, and to persist the
virus through that. Likely no, just depends.

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me551ah
It'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
The 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
The 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-
ent...](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)

Reddit AMA:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/bfrh0g/indias_first_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/bfrh0g/indias_first_indigenous_processor_developed_at/)

------
CalChris
AJIT 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-
ent...](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)

[2] [https://shakti.org.in/](https://shakti.org.in/)

~~~
tambourine_man
Does 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
It'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
This 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.

~~~
nickpsecurity
SPARC 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
RISC-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.

~~~
tambourine_man
>real-time, hardware-supported JavaScript processing

You mean JIT, right?

The benefits of being interpreted falls flat when, in practice, everyone needs
to run a highly tuned just in time compiler.

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
Yes, that. Words were failing me, as was Google.

------
pks016
AMA by the designer of this processor in India subreddit.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/india/comments/bfrh0g/indias_first_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/india/comments/bfrh0g/indias_first_indigenous_processor_developed_at/)

~~~
vishnugupta
I interacted with the founder of Powai Labs back when I was a master's student
there, working as a sysadmin :-).

Good on them!

------
tiuPapa
With 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
There'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.

------
andybak
It 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?

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mahranch
Slightly 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
[http://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
$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?c...](https://us.loropiana.com/en/p/Man/Shirts/Girocollo-
FAF6689?colorCode=WH59)

------
nickpsecurity
They 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
Everything 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
I remember doing real work on CPUs such as a Z-80 at 4MHz. How our standards
and expectations have changed...

------
amrrs
There's an LTE chip that Zoho (backed Engineers built)
[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-
business/...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-
business/zoho-backed-team-creates-1st-desi-lte-chip/articleshow/67999956.cms)

------
sanguy
Amazing 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
Any 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)

~~~
primitivesuave
I 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_demonetis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetisation)

------
n_t
They 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.

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patrickg_zill
If compliant with the Sparcv8 ABI it would immediately have a lot of software
and compiler support.

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rpd9803
(•_•) Oh no, how much longer before we can expect an.. ( •_•)>⌐■-■ Ajit Pai?

