IIT-Madras and ISRO collaborate to develop aerospace-quality IRIS Chip

Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have developed and tested an aerospace-quality SHAKTI-based semiconductor chip.

SHAKTI project backed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under its ‘Digital India RISC-V’ initiative (DIRV) which aims to promote the indigenised development of microprocessor-based products. The initiative offers security and visibility for users adopting RISC-V technology, an open-source Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), for designing custom processors.

The IRIS (Indigenous RISCV Controller for Space Applications) chip can be used in diverse domains from IoT and compute systems for strategic needs, IIT Madras said in a statement. This development was part of the effort to indigenize semiconductors used by ISRO for their applications, command and control systems, and other critical functions.


The idea was conceived by ISRO Inertial Systems Unit (IISU) Thiruvananthapuram designed and implemented by IIT Madras. The chip was manufactured by SCL, Chandigarh and packaged by Tata Advanced Systems in Karnataka.

ISRO Chairman V Narayanan said, “This marks truly a milestone in “Make in India” efforts in semiconductor design and fabrication. We at ISRO are very happy that the IRIS Controller conceived by IISU based on the SHAKTI processor of IIT Madras could be successfully developed end-to-end with Indian resources.”

He added that the high-performance controller will contribute to future embedded controllers for space mission-related applications. “It is planned to flight test a product based on this controller shortly and performance will be confirmed,” Narayanan said.

The microprocessor project was led by V Kamakoti at Prathap Subrahmanyam Centre for Digital Intelligence and Secure Hardware Architecture (PSCDISHA) in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras.

“After RIMO in 2018 and MOUSHIK in 2020, this is the third SHAKTI chip we have fabricated at SCL Chandigarh and successfully booted at IIT Madras,” the professor said.

He highlighted that chip design, fabrication, packaging, motherboard design and fabrication, assembly, software, and boot all happened in India, validating that the complete semiconductor ecosystem and expertise exist within our country.