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The VIF under the S&T series organised a talk on “Semiconductor Technology: A Perspective on the Future of Intelligent Systems” by Prof Manan Suri, Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi on 23 November 2023. Prof Suri’s talk focussed on the next generation of semiconductor memory technology while touching on some of the case studies. While highlighting his research journey in this field so far, he provided his perspective on the present and future of semiconductor technology. Prof Suri’s Research Group at IIT, Delhi has been actively working on exploiting the characteristics of emerging Non Von Neumann (NVM) semiconductor technology for a multitude of novel applications such as data storage, low-power bio-inspired computing and cyber-security.

Semiconductor technology is a critical domain for security of the country. Generally, emphasis in semiconductor domain has been on faster and more efficient processing or computation. Storage technology has not received enough attention, even though it is of equal importance for fidelity of data, input-output speeds, secured operation etc. Therefore, the research group at IIT, Delhi decided to focus on semiconductor storage technology, i.e. memory devices.

The leading tech industries around the world such as IBM, Intel, Google, NVidia and Cerebras are investing a lot in this new computing architecture and new computing chips. Their effort is to go in the direction of new form of computing that is Non Von Neumann (NVN) Computing or the bio inspired computing. This is definitely setting the tone in the areas of investing in the new hardware architecture, and new fundamental way of computing that includes the storage or memory aspects. The research group at IIT Delhi is one of the leading groups globally working on neuromorphic systems.

Impotently, India under the Semicon India Programme helping to build a semiconductor ecosystem in the country. Today several leading academic institutions in India are doing research on semiconductor. However, for true translation to happen, there is a need of absolute chain of command and empowerment in a collaborative framework. To stay relevant processes need to be streamlined and timelines need to be cut down. It was emphasised that for bringing India on the semiconductor manufacturing global map, India needs its own semiconductor Manhattan projects.

The talk was chaired by Lt General R K Sawhney (Retd.), Centre Head and Senior Fellow, National Security and Strategic Studies & Internal Security Studies, VIF, who in his remarks underlined the growing significance of the semiconductor technology in the civil and military field. He highlighted the geopolitics and geo-economics of semiconductor technology, and emphasised the necessity to develop India’s capacity and capability in this field to meet its own requirement and also become an integral part of the global semiconductor value chains.