India's First Commercial High-Performance IoT Chip Launched, Estimated To Cost 30 Per Cent Less Than Competing Chips

Mindgrove Technologies, a Peak XV Partners-backed fabless semiconductor startup, has said it launched what it said India’s first commercial high-performance SoC (system on chip) for the Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Named 'Secure IoT', the chip is estimated to cost 30 percent less than other chips in the similar segment.

According to the startup, which is backed by the IITM Pravartak Technologies Foundation and IIT Madras Incubation Cell, the chip has had a successful MPW tape-out, the silicon industry term for prototyping, at the 28nm node, and that reference boards will be available for Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEMs) to try out in the coming weeks.

Secure IoT is a high-performance microcontroller clocked at 700 MHz, the company said, adding that it is the only Indian chip that is commercially available in this segment.

The RISC-V-based chip will allow Indian OEMs to use an indigenous SoC in their products and help reduce the cost of their feature-rich devices, without compromising on high-end features, the company said in a statement.

The chip, according to the company, is designed to provide programmability, flexibility, security and superior computing power for controlling applications on a wide range of connected smart devices.

The Secure IoT chip can "control everything from wearables like smartwatches to smart city devices like connected electricity, water, and gas meters to connected home devices like smart locks, fans, speakers, as well as, as well as EV battery management systems and control systems, amongst others", the company said.

“India consumes over a billion chips a year and anywhere between 10 to 50 million of them can be replaced by Secure IoT. Further, there is widespread demand for microchips worldwide, and we expect global buyers to be excited about a new option from India,” said Shashwath TR, CEO and Co-Founder of Mindgrove Technologies.

According to the company, Secure IoT offers a wide range of features, such as a large number of I/Os, key security algorithms implemented as hardware accelerators, secure boot, and on-chip one-time programmable memory.

The chip is intended to be used with bare metal code or any microcontroller RTOS (real-time operating system), thus opening up arenas like traffic control systems, autonomous vehicles, medical equipment, etc, it added.

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