Indian Govt. has announced $200mn investment in building the ‘Indian microprocessor’. The core idea behind building an Indian microprocessor is to rely less on commercial microprocessors in military, telecommunications and space systems, more so after reports of a global network of Chinese hackers breaking into sensitive installations worldwide (Dalai Lama in Dharamshala and telecom networks in the UK)
The project will see scientists from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and IIT Delhi coming together under the aegis of the a newly formed organization called Zerone Corp.(source)
If at all India manages to develop this chip, it can also be used for developing low-cost mobile phones as well as high-tech defence precision systems.
Specification
Designers will likely adopt Sun Microsystems’ OpenSparc processor design technology (the open-source version of Sun’s UltraSPARC T1 and T2 microprocessors) along with the Linux operating system and MySQL open-source database software (source).
The Reality
This isn’t the first time Indian govt. has announced a big bang plan of launching it’s own chip. Also, the much hyped ‘Fab city’ which was supposed to house private water fabs have now moved to solar energy projects.
Is this another bureaucratic sale in the name of technology? Only time will tell.
Why are we reinventing the wheel again? I doubt the hacks were actually due to holes in the microprocessor technology itself (if that were the case, the issue and its impact would be more widespread). And where does Linux and MySQL come into the picture when we’re talking about microprocessors.
Hmm.. I am also confused to see, what the heck does the MySQL & Linux are doing here.. may be they are planning to embed Linux & MySQL into a microchip
Great and will the development take place in a cowshed??? It clearly is a strategy to sanction more money to send someones grandson to the USA for higher studies…
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