KalpKranti

We call this revolution KalpKranti.

The larger challenge of technologically empowering a nation of nearly 1.5 billion people cannot be solved through a single programme. However, every major revolution begins with a small but meaningful step. KalpKranti begins with one such step: making semiconductor chip design accessible to every Indian.

The first working transistor was demonstrated at Bell Laboratories in the United States in 1947. It was a relatively large, hand-assembled device. Over the following decades, scientists and engineers worked relentlessly to shrink the transistor to microscopic dimensions.

Today, the processor inside a smartphone or laptop contains billions of transistors. Every message we type, every video call we make, every digital payment we complete, and almost every modern technology we use depends on a carefully designed arrangement of these transistors.

During the early years of electronics, circuits containing hundreds or thousands of transistors could still be designed and connected largely by hand. As computers became more powerful and transistor counts grew from thousands to millions and eventually billions, manual design became impossible.

Sophisticated Electronic Design Automation, or EDA, software was therefore developed to help engineers design, verify, simulate, and manufacture increasingly complex semiconductor chips. Over time, these tools became essential to the semiconductor industry. However, commercial EDA licences can cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, placing them beyond the reach of most students, colleges, independent engineers, and young startups.

Every year, approximately 1.5 lakh electronics and related engineering students graduate in India. Yet many of them complete their education without practical experience in industrial chip-design tools, primarily because these tools are expensive and unavailable at most institutions.

The Government of India has taken an important step through the Chips to Startup programme, which provides semiconductor design tools and fabrication support to selected academic institutions. Students and researchers across participating institutions are already benefiting from this initiative.

However, India has thousands of engineering colleges. Extending proprietary software licences to every institution would require enormous and recurring expenditure from public funds. Even then, access could remain restricted by institutional infrastructure, licence availability, and geographical limitations.

The Solution: Open-Source Semiconductor Design

The long-term solution is to create a complete, reliable, and accessible open-source chip-design ecosystem.

Vicharak, in collaboration with the ITEL Foundation and under the guidance of Padma Shri Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala, has been working with engineers, researchers, and volunteers to integrate the SCL 180-nanometre Process Design Kit with open-source semiconductor design tools.

The Semiconductor Laboratory, or SCL, located in Mohali, is a Government of India-operated semiconductor fabrication facility capable of manufacturing integrated circuits using its 180-nanometre process technology.

A Process Design Kit, commonly known as a PDK, contains the technology information, device models, design rules, standard cells, and verification data required to design a chip that can be manufactured by a particular semiconductor fabrication facility.

By integrating the SCL 180-nanometre PDK with open-source design tools, we aim to enable students, researchers, startups, and independent engineers to complete the journey from a circuit idea to a fabrication-ready chip design without depending entirely on prohibitively expensive proprietary software licences.

Our Mission

Today, accessing the tools, fabrication infrastructure, and technical knowledge required to create a chip is almost impossible for an ordinary Indian student or engineer.

KalpKranti intends to change this.

With open-source tools, accessible learning resources, shared fabrication programmes, and an affordable semiconductor shuttle, anyone with a laptop could begin designing a chip— whether they are studying in a leading research institution, sitting in a small college in rural India, working from the Rann of Kutch, living in a Himalayan town, or building solutions along the banks of the Ganga.