India’s first processor ‘Shakti’ is ready for app development as SDK gets released

irfan_kolkata · 发表于 2019-07-03 12:39:24

Recently, India’s first open-source Shakti processor was announced, which has been funded by the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Now, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has released the software development kit (SDK) for the processor.[br][br]The institute has also promised that the development board will soon be released. The RISE group at IIT Madras had started working on the Shakti project in the year 2016 with a plan to release a family of six classes of processors, each serving a different market. Also, the group has promised that the reference processors will be competitive with commercial offerings in terms of area, performance and power consumption.[br][br]

[br][br][br]The six classes of processors include E-Class, C-Class, I-Class, M-Class, S-Class, and H-Class. The E class is a 3-stage in-order processor targeted at embedded devices such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, robotic platforms, motor controls, et cetera.[br][br]The C class is a 32-bit 5 stage in-order microcontroller-class of processors supporting 0.2-1 GHz clock speeds. It’s aimed at mid-range application workloads and has a very low power profile, along with optional memory protection.[br][br]On the other hand, the I class 64-bit out-of-order processors support 1.5-2.5 GHz clock speeds and support for multi-threading. It targets mobile, storage and networking applications. As for the M class processor, the M stands for multi-core and supports up to eight CPU cores.[br][br]The S class processors are aimed at the workstation and server-type workloads. It’s an enhanced version of the I class processor that features multi-threading support. The H class processor is for the high-performance computing and analytics workloads.[br][br]Its primary features include high single-thread performance, optional L4 cache, as well as support for Gen-Z fabric and storage-class memory. As per the reports, the RISE group is also working on two new experimental classes of processors — T-class and F-class.