The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras launched a government-funded software development kit (SDK) for its open-source Shakti processor last month, in a move to help India build its first indigenous processor.

An open-source processor is a software of which the original source code is available freely. It can be redistributed and modified.

The open-source, since it is a part of the source code, will be a part of the software. It will be a chip installed in the CPU of the computer, similar to the tech major Intel's processor chips which are widely used in India.

The project was funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The project was set up with the aim of India building its own processors, just like China and the European Union, instead of depending on US processors.

IIT-M's RISE group (Reconfigurable and Intelligent Systems Engineering group) began working on the Shakti project in 2016. The plan was to release six classes of processors, which are E, C, I, M, S and H.

Each class serves a different market. For example, the E class is targeted at embedded devices such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, robotic platforms, among others, while the C class is aimed at mid-range application workloads.