Semiconductor Company Mindgrove Unveils India's First-Ever Commercial MCU Chip
Mindgrove Technologies, backed by Peak XV Partners, announced the launch of what they assert to be India’s inaugural commercial high-performance SoC (system on chip). Dubbed Secure IoT, it's tailored for IoT devices and is anticipated to be priced approximately 30% lower than comparable chips in its category.
The startup, backed by IITM Pravartak Technologies Foundation and nurtured within the IIT-Madras Incubation Cell, announced that the chip has undergone a successful MPW tape-out (a silicon industry term for prototyping) at the 28nm node. Additionally, reference boards will soon be accessible for original equipment manufacturers to test in the upcoming weeks.
The startup headquartered in Chennai stated that the chip will enable domestic firms to integrate an Indian SoC into their products, thereby lowering the expenses of their devices while retaining top-tier features. Secure IoT, operating as a high-performance microcontroller at 700 MHz, stands as the sole Indian chip commercially accessible within this sector, as per the company's assertion.
According to the statement, the chip is engineered to deliver programmability, flexibility, security, and enhanced computational capability for overseeing applications across a diverse array of interconnected smart devices. "This chip can control everything from wearables like smartwatches to smart city devices like connected electricity, water and gas meters to connected home devices like smart locks, fans, speakers, as well as EV battery management systems and control systems, amongst others", the company said in a statement.
In addition to selling the chip, Mindgrove will offer design support to Indian brands to accelerate innovation and scale of production in India. "India consumes over a billion chips a year and anywhere between 10 and 50 million of them can be replaced by Secure IoT. Further, there is widespread demand for microchips worldwide, and we expect global buyers to be excited about a new option from India”, said Shashwath TR, Chief Executive and Co-founder of Mindgrove Technologies.
The pandemic revealed the wide gap between high-end and low-end players in the embedded systems space, with the latter prioritizing cost and volume over the chip’s actual performance, Shashwath said. "This led us to set out to design chips that target the middle market".
Mindgrove stated that Secure IoT provides an extensive array of features and is designed to be compatible with bare metal code or any microcontroller RTOS (real-time operating system). This compatibility broadens its application scope to areas such as traffic control systems, autonomous vehicles, medical equipment, and more. Founded by Shashwath and Sharan Srinivas J, Mindgrove is supported by Peak XV Partners, Speciale Invest, and Whiteboard Capital.
