Domestic semiconductor designer Mindgrove joins UK’s Imagination’s IP program

Chennai-headquartered semiconductor design agency, Mindgrove Technologies, on Monday introduced a partnership with UK-headquartered semiconductor design licensing agency Imagination Technologies. Under the partnership, Mindgrove will get entry to mental property (IP) owned by the latter for designing silicon chips — utilizing which the homegrown agency will look to construct its personal graphics processing unit (GPU) chips and synthetic intelligence (AI) accelerator processors.

Mindgrove’s chips use indigenously developed ‘Shakti’ core microprocessors, designed in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras‘ Reconfigurable Intelligent Systems Engineering (RISE) Labs. The microprocessors were developed for industrial deployment, under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity)’s RISC-V program.

In a press assertion, Mindgrove mentioned that its developed chips might be utilized in “energy constrained purposes”, such as in automobiles, industrial automation, security and aviation.

Designing chips from scratch is a cost-intensive affair, because of which smaller semiconductor design firms typically prefer to license chip design IPs from larger companies, in order to build their custom chips on top of a base design. Imagination has notably been a supplier of GPUs to Apple for its iPhones, offering GPUs under its ‘PowerVR’ brand until the iPhone 7 series of 2016.

Shashwath TR, chief executive of Mindgrove, said in a statement that the licensing of chip IP of Imagination will be “more than just a cost advantage,” — including that the startup will acquire mentorship from Imagination’s engineers, and likewise cut back the ‘time to market’ metric for its personal customized chips.

On 23 February, Mindgrove introduced a seed funding spherical, led by early-stage enterprise capital agency Speciale Invest and Peak XV Partners (previously Sequoia India).

The startup’s partnership announcement comes amid a flurry of investments within the semiconductor area in India. On 22 June, US chipmaker Micron introduced a $2.75 billion, multi-year plan to set-up a semiconductor meeting, testing and packaging facility in Sanand, Gujarat — with its personal funding amounting to $825 million. The firm mentioned on the time that its mission, as soon as accomplished, will create as much as 5,000 direct and 15,000 oblique jobs.

Fellow US companies Applied Materials and Lam Research additionally made bulletins on the identical day. While Applied Materials introduced a $400 million engineering improvement middle to construct industrial chipmaking devices and elements, Lam Research unveiled ‘Semiverse’ — a high-precision digital platform that might be added to engineering curriculum, with a purpose to practice 60,000 semiconductor engineers over 10 years.

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Updated: 26 Jun 2023, 09:22 PM IST