“You have to be crazy to want to make silicon” | Sharan Srinivas J, Mindgrove

[00:01:33] Funding Announcement: A vote of confidence

[00:03:38] Semiconductor industry: understanding the basics and semiconductor components

[00:08:00] Silicon wafers, lasers and chip manufacturing: deep dive into companies and technologies

[00:15:51] Chips in our phone: breakdown of individual parts and 3nm vs 28nm chips

[00:20:50] Mindgrove Technologies products: Secure IoT with a 28nm chip and SoC architecture

[00:23:52] Technology Demonstrator vs Commercial Grade processor: what’s the difference?

[00:25:40] Vision SoC: Next gen product for computer vision

[00:28:08] India’s Semiconductor Mission (ISM): Why are countries suddenly over investing in semiconductors?

[00:34:53] The RISE Lab: How did it start and the IIT Madras ecosystem

[00:40:24] Work and study balance: Ph.D student and a co-founder among his many hats

[00:42:14] Government, IIT Madras and Mindgrove Technologies: Working with the checks and balances of each entity

[00:46:00] 8 months to execute chip design: a new speed record and the importance of IIT Madras infrastructure

[00:49:45] Work-Life balance: Family and Ph.D guide support is foundational

[00:54:15] The insight that kicked off the journey: “It will come when you make it”

[00:57:43] Making silicon: A special brand of crazy

[00:59:00] Journey from research to commercialization: a peek into the VC thought process

[01:02:53] Failure: The ability to handle failure and a personal story

[01:08:36] Finding joy and relaxing: How does he do it?

[00:01:06] IIT Madras

[01:04:38] Sharan completed his M.Sc in Computational Science and Engineering from ETH Zurich in Switzerland

[00:23:34] Professor Veezhinathan Kamakoti was in charge when the Shakti processor for Mindgrove was developed

[00:42:16] Shashwath T R is the CEO and Co-founder of Mindgrove Technologies

[00:47:32] Umamaheswaran SG, the COO of Mindgrove Technologies spent a year with Sharan and Shashwat thinking about what to build

[01:00:47] Rajan Anandan from Peak XV partners provided some insight to the founders of Mindgrove Technologies 

[01:03:39] Rahul Dravid is quoted as an example of a stubborn gritty guy

[00:01:53] Rocketship VC and Mela Ventures are the two new investors investing in Mindgrove

[00:03:09] Peak XV Partners and Speciale Invest have also invested in Mindgrove

[00:05.44] Google Drive and One Drive of Microsoft need semiconductor chips to work

[00:07:11] Mindgrove Technologies is a fabless/ pure plate design house that designs the chip and has it manufactured and tested externally.

[00:07:46] Qualcomm and Nvidia are also fabless semiconductor entities

[00:08:04] Intel designs and manufactures their own chips in their fabrication plants

[00:08:11] Samsung is also similar to Intel to a certain extent and is the largest manufacturer of memory chips in the world

[00:08:41] There is a lot of competition between Micron Technology, SK Hynix and Samsung in the chip manufacturing space

[00:09:21] TSMC is a company that doesn’t design chips but is part of the manufacturing process

[00:14:21] ASML manufactures the 3 NM transistors

[00:23:24] The Shakti Processor was developed in the IIT Madras RISE Lab.

[00:58:31] NXP Semiconductors spend a billion dollars on just R&D

[01:09:11] Sharan prefers not to watch movies like Inception 

[01:09:41] Sharan watches IPL matches, provided the match fulfils certain conditions

[00:02:35] DLI Design Linked Incentive is a scheme offered by Govt of India and Mindgrove Technologies is one of the companies which has won it.

[00:09:30] Pure Play Foundries are companies that only focus on manufacturing.

[00:10:49] Design Rule Check lays out certain set of rules for laying out circuits on silicon

[00:16:10] Silicon die is the term used to refer to a bare piece of silicon in industry language

[00:17:21] OSAT stands for Outsourced Assembly And Testing 

[00:17:28] ATMP stands for Assembly Testing Marking and Packaging - these are terms used to describe the process the companies do.

[00:24:21] SOC stands for System-on-Chip architecture meaning a full system on single chip

[00:28:08] ISM India Semiconductor Mission 

[00:34:31] The RISE (Reconfigurable Intelligent Systems Engineering) Lab is at IIT Madras

[00:37:35] The IIT Madras Research Park houses the Mindgrove Technologies offices

[00:39:03] The Pravartak Technologies Foundation in the Incubation park is specifically for startups in cyber physical system space

[00:39:17] The IITM Incubation Cell is responsible for a lot of successful startups

[00:39:49] SNACS - Sensors, Networks, Actuators and Control Systems