SHAKTI vs INTEL and ARM

  

                SHAKTI- means “the power”. Shakti the first microprocessor designed and developed by IIT Madras. A group of engineers from Computer Science Department under the guidance of their professor managed to develop a built in microprocessor which can be deliberately used in mobile computing and wireless devices.Shakti is building many processors based on the RISC-V instruction set.

                Shakti is less vulnerable to systems infected with hardware Trojans. According to the team IITM Shakti processor targets clock speeds to suit for various handy-user applications like electronic devices, mobile computing, embedded low power systems and networking systems.

                In July 2018 Shakti’s team made an attempt to create first 300 chips, like RISECREEK was produced under the project Shakti which is then fabricated by Multinational chip Manufacturer Intel’s facility at Oregon, USA which was successfully booted into the LINUX OS. Now, the fabrication is done in India.

 

Types of processors:

Shakti has divided its microprocessor into 3 types:

•  Base processors
•  Multi processors.
•  Experimental processors.

 

The base processor is again classified in to 3 types:

• E-class processor which is used in embedded applications, robotic controller boards, and in IoT boards.
• The C-class processor which is used in smartphone applications and runs at a clock frequency of 1.5 GHz
• I-class processor it is a performance-oriented core which could be used in Laptop’s, PC’s .the range of processor is 1.5 to 2.0GHz.

 

Salient features of Shakti:

•        The design of Shakti is unique hence it can be used in any sector.
•       It is mainly designed for low power wireless embedded systems and networking systems.
•        Shakti is completely designed on new RISC-V ISA (Instruction set architecture)
•        Shakti is one of the few open-source Microprocessor’s available in electronic markets.
•         Shakti will never be outdated as it is made with all international standards.

           

            The basic design of microprocessors heads from selecting the best ISA (instruction set Architecture). Shakti is designed on the new RISC-V ISA .it is free open-source ISA which is creating a new era in the innovation of processors.

 

Do we find any Indian competitors to Shakti?

            Well In that case I would tell yes .PARAM 8000 the first Indian super computer designed by a company named CDAC (Centre for development and advanced computing) has a strategy of developing their own super computers which supports their own processor.

 

How shakti  is different from intel and Arm?

            Mainly because it uses open source RISC-V instruction architecture. Intel and AMD use their own. They do not share this with anyone. If you reverse engineer and make you will have to deal with court cases.

            RISC-V is an open source instruction set architecture. Suppose you go to buy a car, but you are forced to buy a truck along with it. This is the problem with INTEL and ARM. You can not choose what specific instructions you want to use. You have to buy them all. We can use RISC-V to make custom chip design for our needs. As a bonus, many people responsible for RISC-V are also Indian.

 

SHAKTI vs INTEL vs ARM

 

                In case of ARM, it compares with the A55. It is honestly unfair to do this. The reason behind this is that most processors are based on von Neumann architecture which is an old structure whereas Shakti based on Harvard structure which is newer. Basically, Neumann architecture uses the same pipe for both water and gas that is instructions and data. Whereas Harvard architecture uses separate pipes for water and gas that is data and instructions.

 

Advantages of Shakti vs Intel vs Arm:

                The biggest one is security. When we buy a processor from somebody abroad we only know what they tell us. We do not know what they do not tell us. And that is a big issue for national missions. Shakti whereas lets you be involved in the design process.

Last but not least it is an Indian tech company.

 

This blog is for academic activity.

Author - Swati More

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