The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has launched a software development kit (SDK) for its open-source Shakti processor. Shakti is an open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture that was funded by the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The chipset has been in the works for since 2016 and now Indian Institute of Technology Madras has released an SDK (software development kit) for the processor.
The RISE group has been working on this project at the IIT Madras since 2016 with the dream of releasing a pack of six classes of processors, and each one will be serving on different markets. RISE also promised that the reference processors would be rivaling with commercial offerings in terms of area, performance and power consumption. The six series of the class include E-class, C-class, I-Class, M-class, S-Class, and H-Class.
Like China and the European Union, India is also showing interest in designing their processors rather than relying on a processor that is designed by U.S. manufacturers. With the launch of the Shakti SDK, developers can begin to develop apps for the Shakti processors, even before they’re commercialized.
A report also suggests that the RISE group is also working on two new classes of processors which will be named as T-class and F-class. It will be interesting to see how these processors will be managed and when we might use them.
