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ewertz2
I'm not sure that I'd be thinking in terms of design "wins". It seems more ...
docdivakar
Good luck to the engineers at this startup. I hope they know what they are doing ...
Indian startup pledges to provide chips for tablets
Peter Clarke
2/26/2013 3:50 AM EST
NUREMBERG, Germany – Dreamchip Electronics Pte Ltd. (Visakhaptnam, India), a fabless semiconductor company founded in 2012, has announced plans to provide a family of processor SoCs for tablet computers in 2014.
The company has said it is planning to produce three variants based on a proprietary multicore 32-bit RISC-plus-DSP processor architecture. The three variants of the architecture – named Siddhi, Vani and Sandesh – are each being optimized for a different form of tablet.
Siddhi is designed to power a student's e-reader tablet and is optimized for low-cost, large volume applications. Siddhi-powered tablets are expected to replace printed text books. Vani is targeted at a multimedia tablet for students. Sandesh is the high-end SoC optimized for use in citizen-centric e-governance and e-commerce tablets.
Dreamchip, which also provides SoC design services, is working with Sankhya Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Chennai, India) to create design flows for SoC design and verification using Sankhya's Teraptor software as a high-level starting point for system modeling and synthesis.
The SoCs are designed to help Indian electronics manufacturers address the needs of both rural and urban users and the chips will be produced with reference tablet designs and embedded software supporting to different Indian languages.
"Following the encouraging response from prospective customers Dreamchip Electronics is initially targeting the large and fast-growing Indian market. Dreamchip plans to offer the SoCs globally at a later stage," said Gopi Kumar Bulusu, founder director at Dreamchip, in a statement.
Prototyping platforms for all three variants will be available by 3Q13 on the Teraptor and selected customers are expected to be offered FPGA kits in 1Q14 and test chip SoCs in 3Q14, the company said.
Related links and articles:
www.dreamchip.in
www.sankhya.com
News articles:
Indian chip industry body broadens remit
Cadence buys analog IP startup
India fab decision likely this quarter
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eewiz
2/26/2013 4:33 AM EST
Unfortunately there isn't any room for a new CPU architecture. Even MIPS couldnt make it. ARM CPUs are quite inexpensive already and is definitely enough for any market.
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Baabu
2/26/2013 9:07 AM EST
I think new architecture needs to come and start challenge monopoly created in the industry. Go full blown and challenge ARM. India should grow.
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tefl0n
2/26/2013 10:34 AM EST
New architecture.. keep dreaming.
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eewiz
2/26/2013 10:52 AM EST
Probably a new business model is a better option.. ie no licensing fee+ no royalty. A cut of the ad revenue that OS maker/Ad engine makes out of the phone/tablet.
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MikeSmith2011
2/26/2013 5:06 PM EST
This seems to be targetted at the local market in India. Note that most smart-phones and tablets are out of reach for the majority of that population. If they can come up with a cheap solution then that might work.
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Helicopter
2/27/2013 6:33 PM EST
India's mobile subscriber base is 1 billion
Smartphone sales were greater than 150m in 2012
India is the largest market for $600 smartphones
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Jack.L
2/27/2013 9:30 AM EST
"Following the encouraging response from prospective customers" ....
Customers often give you encouraging responses when you first introduce a new technology to them. There is a big difference between encouraging response and committed order.
An E-reader is (or was at least) a closed system, so that is possible. However, when you get into tablets, you are now talking open systems. The processor is the least of your worries. The infrastructure to support development as well as requisite applications is what is going to drive sales.
As someone mentioned, Arm is already relatively inexpensive perhaps not viewed at the processor level alone, but when viewed as a percentage of the overall tablet, the cost is minimal. Also the core is just one piece .... peripherals, graphics core, etc. all still needed.
One thing that people forget about ARM too is that ARM did not become the dominant architecture over night ... it has been a 25+ year journey to this point.
I am not saying that no one should try to develop a new architecture, and I wish them success, but unless there is a whole lot more than what is written here, it does not sound like the start of a success story.
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tomrunsalot
2/27/2013 12:22 PM EST
Today, the top ten fabless companies comprise 80% of the market. All great companies, they are all targeting the mobile market, of which tablets and e-readers are a subset. Presumably, this start-up is confident it can succeed with not one, but three, new chips, for a new class of India-designed-and-produced products that will be protected from international competition by the government. To think that a start-up (not an acquisition) can be competitive in this segment (by 2014) and that a government developed electronics ecosystem can produce practical and worthwhile tablets and ebooks for Indian society is nothing short of delusional (perhaps criminal). It would be humorous if it wasn't so so tragic.
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docdivakar
2/28/2013 2:57 AM EST
Good luck to the engineers at this startup. I hope they know what they are doing and can get to final silicon in a couple of iterations. BUT start working on design wins NOW if you have a semi-functional prototype!
MP Divakar
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ewertz2
3/2/2013 2:56 PM EST
I'm not sure that I'd be thinking in terms of design "wins". It seems more likely one should be talking about design "gifts", driven by the government or a monopoly pseudo-customer. "Wins" suggests competition and it's very, very unclear that they'll ever get to that point. This is pretty clearly a closed-market play for the forseeable future.
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