Prof R V Raja Kumar

Creation of VLSI Design Faculty and Chip Designs

In 2015, there was no BTech programme in ECE and no faculty members in the core area of VLSI and IC design and no significant lab facilities were available. Upon joining, the institute, Prof Raja Kumar convinced the need for creating a team and facilities and took strong initiatives. Faculty members were recruited, design facilities were established, a BTech and an MTech course in ECE were created, sponsored projects were taken up, IC design exercise was made, and the institute grew to the stage of getting the first IC’s of Odisha fabricated and tested.

Furthermore, Prof Kumar himself designed an MTech course on VLSI and Nano-Electronics with emphasis on chip designs and semiconductor technology. When he left in April 2022, the course was approved in full and was scheduled to run from July 2022. Also the institute initiated discussions with the government of Odisha expressing its willingness to support and be an important entity of the local and national ecosystem of National Semiconductor Mission (NSM), if Odisha bids for a fab. Indeed, the state government bid for a fab and the process has been on.

The diagram of the first chip designed at IIT Bhubaneswar (and also the first from Odisha), successful fabricated and tested is as shown below.

IC Designed and Developed in TSMC 1.2 V, 65nm CMOS Technology at the School of Electrical Sciences, IIT Bhubaneswar for IEEE802.15.4e Standard : Short Range Low-Power IoT Applications