India’s first flagship Edge AI System-on-Chip (NETRA A2000), created at the advanced 12nm technology node, was successfully been brought up by Thiruvananthapuram-based fabless startup Netrasemi, marking a significant milestone in the country’s semiconductor design ecosystem.
In a statement, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw praised the success, saying that the Design-Linked Incentive (DLI) program in India is having a positive impact and is facilitating the acceleration of innovation in the country’s semiconductor industry.
The minister stated that the NETRA A2000 is built to accommodate smart vision devices and real-time AI applications in fields including drones, robotics, automotive, and surveillance.
The silicon bring-up process, which verifies the chip’s functionality after fabrication, was completed successfully, and the chip is now ready for commercial production.
The device, which was made by TSMC using its 12nm process technology, is designed for applications that require high-TOPS AI performance, computer vision processing, video streaming, and secure edge computing.
Integral to the system on a chip (SoC) are the crypto engines, image signal processors (ISPs), vision processing units (VPUs), and neural processing units (NPUs) developed by Netrasemi.
With its proprietary heterogeneous graph-stream parallel processing architecture, which enhances high-performance, real-time edge AI processing, the company has set itself apart from the competition.
In order to broaden the chip’s commercial possibilities, the firm claims that it will share it with some original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for joint R&D.
According to TSMC, their fabrication facilities in Taiwan are set to start producing commercial-scale products next year.
The SoC combines patented hardware acceleration with domain-specific optimisation for edge AI workloads, according to Jyothis Indirabhai, Co-founder and CEO of Netrasemi. This goes beyond standard AI integration, according to Indirabhai.
Additionally, this breakthrough highlights how the government’s Design-Linked Incentive (DLI) and Design Infrastructure Support (DIS) programs help new semiconductor companies get off the ground.
Netrasemi has amassed 125 crore rupees in capital, and it was one of four startups chosen for a 15 crore rupee injection from the DLI program in 2023.
With this success, India has taken a giant leap toward its semiconductor goals, bolstering its own capacity for chip design and lending credence to the larger Semicon India objective.
Image Credit: Pro Kerala
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