The minister for electronics and information technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said that the Indian Institute of Technology in Bhubaneswar has been given permission to carry out a project under the Chips to Startups program.

IIT Bhubaneswar has reportedly joined the government's Chips to Startups program, according to Vaishnaw. MeitY’s Chips to Startup program seeks to teach 85,000 top-tier engineers in VLSI and embedded system design technologies.

The approval calls for a five-year project to be carried out at IIT Bhubaneswar with the working title ‘Energy Efficient Mesh Architecture Based Indigenous Neuromorphic Processor for Extreme Edge IoT (internet of things) Applications’. The Chips to Startup program will be used to carry out the project.

In addition to the project at IIT Bhubaneswar, the IIT Hyderabad proposes to launch an undergraduate program in VLSI design and technology with the same goal of building a talent pool of highly trained semiconductor engineers and technical specialists.

Along with over 250,000 shop-floor technicians and junior engineers, both courses are a part of the IT ministry's aim to train 85,000 engineers for various positions in the semiconductor industry. The government has partnered with Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute to train shop floor technicians.

Following discussions with international companies that had expressed interest in the semiconductor mission of the IT ministry, the strategy to develop a talent pool of engineers and shop-floor technicians was developed. These companies then informed the government that while there were many engineers in senior positions in India, including management positions, there were hardly any employable graduates at the trainee level.

A diploma in the integrated chip manufacturing process and a bachelor's degree in VLSI design and technology were among the two new diploma and undergraduate-level courses that schools were permitted to offer in April of this year by the All-India Council for Technical Education.

“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”, states AICTE.