ChipIN Spurs Lakhs of Hours in Circuit Design Training: MeitY

• ChipIN has enabled lakhs of hours of circuit design training using free EDA tools in 240 universities.
• Institutes like IIIT Delhi and VIT logged heavy usage of tools from Cadence and Synopsys.
• The program includes tech support, boosting hands-on learning and research nationwide.

The Union Government's ChipIN Centre has so far ensured much broader access to Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools across the top engineering institutes in India, resulting in extensive training in circuit design.

According to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), it is estimated that students have logged in lakhs of hours on these EDA tools, thus greatly enhancing the extraction of practical knowledge in electronics. After the announcement of the Design Linked Incentive and Chips to Startups schemes in the year 2022, the government started licensing the expensive EDA tools and giving them free of cost to startups and academic institutes.

Anuj Grover, Associate Professor at IIIT Delhi, commented on the great investment in securing these tools, saying it was truly beneficial for the students. In the month of April alone, IIIT Delhi students and researchers had put in over 31,000 hours of work using Cadence tools. Historically, IIIT used to have very limited access to licenses like these, prior to ChipIN.

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MeitY has given the EDA tools to 240 universities. Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the program's breadth made international observers sit up in surprise. Not only elite institutes, but other places like Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) also recorded over one lakh hours of usage of Synopsys tools in April. According to Dr. Grover, ChipIN has also worked on providing strong technical support beyond just the tools, which is one of the key features of the license.

M Hari Hara Sudhan, Correspondent at the Dr. Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology in Coimbatore said, "vital step towards generating industry-ready manpower and a self-reliant chip design ecosystem in India".

"The scarcity of licenses beforehand led to a small number of students being able to concurrently use the software. And costs for the licenses exceeded more than ₹10 lakh a year. IIIT students were put to work directly, while students from other institutes were given time to learn the EDA tools", added Dr. Grover.