Shakti chip board. ( (Image credit: IIT Madras))

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has released the software development kit (SDK) for its open-source Shakti processor. Shakti is based on the open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture and was funded by the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The institute promised that a development board will also be released soon.

The RISE group at IIT Madras started working on the Shakti project in 2016 with a plan to release a family of six classes of processors, each serving a different market. The group promised that the reference processors will be competitive with commercial offerings in terms of area, performance and power consumption.

Now India, like China and the European Union, are showing interest in designing their own processors, rather than relying on ones designed by U.S. manufacturers.

With the release of the Shakti SDK, developers can begin to develop applications for the Shakti processors, even before they're commercialized.

E Class

The E class is a 3-stage in-order processor targeted at embedded devices such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, robotic platforms, motor controls, et cetera.

C Class

This is a 32-bit 5 stage in-order microcontroller-class of processors supporting 0.2-1 GHz clock speeds. It's aimed at mid-range application workloads and has a very low power profile, plus support for optional memory protection.

I Class

The I class 64-bit out-of-order processors support 1.5-2.5 GHz clock speeds and support for multi-threading. It targets mobile, storage and networking applications.

M Class

The M stands for multi-core here, as the M class processors support up to eight CPU cores, which can also be I and C class cores.

S Class

The S class of Shakti processors is aimed at workstation and server-type workloads. It’s an enhanced version of the I class processor that features multi-threading support.

H Class

These are processors for the high-performance computing and analytics workloads. Their primary features include a high single-thread performance, optional L4 cache, as well as support for Gen-Z fabric and storage-class memory.

Experimental Designs

The RISE group is also working on two new experimental classes of processors. The first is the T class, which should support object-level security and coarse grain tags for micro-VM-like functionality to mitigate software attacks like buffer-overflow.

The second is the F class, which can be thought of as an upgrade over the T class with additional support for redundant compute blocks and bus fabrics, ECC memory and functionality to detect permanent faults.