IIT Madras Shakti Chip: V Kamakoti Says Trust Was Bigger Challenge Than Engineering
IIT Madras Director V Kamakoti says building trust among researchers, funders and industry was the biggest challenge behind India's indigenous Shakti microprocessor.
IIT Madras Director V Kamakoti has said that building Shakti, an indigenous Indian microprocessor, was not primarily an engineering challenge but a challenge of building trust. According to Kamakoti, convincing researchers, funders and industry stakeholders that the project could succeed took considerable time.
Shakti is a family of processors developed at IIT Madras using the open RISC-V instruction set architecture. The technology is designed to reduce dependence on foreign processor architectures and support India's efforts towards greater technological self-reliance.
Kamakoti said researchers must first develop confidence in their own project, while investors and supporters also need to believe in its potential. He attributed the eventual support for Shakti partly to the expertise of IIT Madras researchers and the institution's reputation for taking on complex projects.
He also highlighted IIT Madras's startup ecosystem, saying its Research Park has incubated more than 590 companies. According to him, the combined valuation of these ventures has reached around Rs 83,000 crore.
Kamakoti said young entrepreneurs often have strong technical capabilities but need mentorship in areas beyond technology, particularly while taking innovations from research to wider adoption.
The Shakti project comes as India expands its semiconductor ambitions, including investments in domestic chip manufacturing. The experience, according to Kamakoti, highlights that developing indigenous technology requires not only engineering expertise and funding but also confidence from the ecosystem that will ultimately adopt and support it.
