TALK II : Emergence of DIR-V Ecosystem : VEGA Microprocessors

Speaker: Mr. S Krishnakumar Rao
Senior Director and Head, Hardware Design Group,C-DAC, Trivandrum
DATE: 24/06/2023 TIME: 15:30 hrs - 16:00 hrs

Biography: Mr. Krishnakumar Rao is a Senior Director, C-DAC and the Head of the Hardware Design Group, C-DAC, Thiruvananthapuram. He is leading and mentoring a team of 80+ technical members executing various projects in the areas of Microprocessor Design, FPGA/ASIC Design, Embedded Systems Design and IP core development.

Mr. Krishnakumar Rao obtained his Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication from College of Engineering Trivandrum and M.Tech in Microelectronics and VLSI Design from IIT, Madras. He has over 25 years of experience in the areas of System Architecture Design, RTL Coding, Functional Verification, Synthesis, Place & Route and Hardware Testing, Microcontroller/Microprocessor based system design involving Hardware Circuit & PCB Design and Firmware development and IP Core Design, Development and Verification.

Mr. Krishnakumar Rao has been at the forefront of various initiatives in indigenous technology development, consistently working in areas of technology innovation. He has designed India's first Digital Energy Meter ASIC, 'Oorja' in 0.8um CMOS technology in 1997. Over 200,000 devices were fabricated and the technology successfully transferred to industry partners with the meters supplied to various State Electricity Boards.

Mr. Krishnakumar Rao has led the team in the design of India's first Hearing Aid ASIC, 'NAADA' fabricated in 130nm CMOS technology. Technology of 'Tarang' Hearing Aids, based on NAADA transferred to industry and over 100,000 units sold by industry partner. The project had won the "National Award for the Empowerment of persons with Disabilities -2012", from Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, which was awarded by Honorable President of India.

Mr. Krishnakumar Rao is mow Program Manager for the Digital India RISC-V Program (DIR-V) and has been instrumental in the development of the indigenous microprocessors, which comprises of the design of VEGA series of indigenous 32/64-bit Single/multi-core Processors based on RISC-V ISA, from the ground-up. He has led the team which has been successful in development of India's first indigenous 64-bit Quad Core RISC-V based Superscalar Out-of-Order Processor.

Mr. Krishnakumar Rao continues to inspire and drive the team in building the portfolio of silicon proven processor, peripheral and system IP cores and embedded design which are deployed in customer products as well as which technology transfers are carried out. The team is also executing custom development projects for various agencies like ISRO, DRDO, NPCIL etc.