What an opening – Just like a movie. You should have been there to believe it….

The tech symposium started with Krste’s talk on “History of RISC-V Ecosystem around the world”. The talk started from very basic topic like “Why Instruction Set Architecture Matters?” and ended on a very important note on the need of a FREE ISA. He also provided ideas on how chip design factories can become company like Instagram, which exactly is everybody’s vision of abstracting details, and take advantage of existing online infrastructure

This talk was followed by Manu Verma’s keynote on “Mi-V Embedded Ecosystem Addressing Target Markets by Microsemi”, and “State of the Semiconductor Industry in India” by Pallam Raju, Former Union Minister of HRD, Govt. of India.

Post lunch, the stage was taken over by Keshav Dattatreya Nayak, who is a distinguished scientist and Former Director General, DRDO. Dr Nayak joined DEAL, Dehradun as Scientist D and rose to the position of Sc. F. He was instrumental in the development of MICs, millimeter wave components/subsystems for strategic applications. He gave good insights on “SoCs for Military and Defense Applications”

Next, Sunil Shenoy, VP of Hardware Engineering at SiFive, made very interesting notes about “Hardware Design Methodology for RISC-V Based SoC’s” starting from basics of Moore’s law.

Next interesting keynote came from Varma Konala, Business Head, Smart Devices, Intel Corporation. He talked about “Challenges & Solutions for the Proliferation of Smart/Secure IoT Edge Devices”. This was followed by mine and Anagha’s talk on “How to design complex RISC-V SoC using open-source EDA tools?” and “Time to monetize/productize your idea”, where provided some cool solutions for individual enthusiasts, hobbyists, designers, founders, students, professionals, and anyone who wants to innovate in the field of chip design

Finally, over all, it was a great event comprised of ~200 people from diverse professions. More-over the energy was at a completely different level. The queries that came in, surely was enough to prove that RISC-V is “India’s national ISA”.

The energy is still for 5-more cities…Stay tuned for more updates from other cities

All the best and happy learning..