Addressing a press conference in Bhubaneshwar on Sunday, Vaishnaw said that IIT Bhubaneswar had joined the government’s Chips to Startups program. The Chips to Startup program of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) aims to train 85,000 high-quality engineers in Very large-scale integration (VLSI) and Embedded System Design technologies.
As per the approval, a project titled ‘Energy Efficient Mesh Architecture Based Indigenous Neuromorphic Processor for Extreme Edge IoT (internet of things) Applications’ will be run at IIT Bhubaneswar for a period of five years. The project will be run under the chips to startup program.
Apart from the project at IIT Bhubaneswar, the IIT Hyderabad also plans to start an undergraduate course in VLSI design and technology, which also aims to create a pool of highly qualified semiconductor engineers and technical experts.
Both the courses are a part of the IT ministry’s plan to train 85,000 engineers for various roles in the semiconductor industry, apart from nearly 250,000 shop-floor technicians and junior engineers. For the training of shop-floor technicians, the government has tied up with Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute and The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore.
The plan to create a talent pool of engineers and shop-floor technicians was created following consultations with global companies that had shown interest in the IT ministry’s semiconductor mission. These companies had then told government officials that a though India had lot of engineers at the senior level, including in management roles, there were almost no employable graduates at the trainee level.
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In April this year, the All-India Council for Technical Education had allowed institutions to offer two new diploma and undergraduate-level courses, which included a diploma in the integrated chip manufacturing process and a bachelor’s degree in VLSI design and technology.
“With reference to the Program for Development of Semiconductors and Display manufacturing ecosystem in India, as approved by the Cabinet, it is pertinent that the aspirations of India to set up semiconductors and display manufacturing ecosystem would require market-ready the talent pool in the field of semiconductors and display, which ultimately would require a clear roadmap of capacity building,” the official circular from AICTE had said.
