IIT Delhi researchers have developed what the institute describes as India’s first working, demonstrable indigenously designed micro-GPU from a university. The new technology has been created by the institute’s Electrical Engineering Department and demonstrated on a standard FPGA development board.
The project was led by MTech students Nammi Akash and M Ravi Teja under the guidance of Prof Jayadeva and Prof Kaushik Saha.
The development is significant because graphics processing units, commonly used to handle images and graphics, are currently imported for use in modern hardware.
Professor Jayadeva from the Department of Electrical Engineering said the work highlights the educational and research potential of programmable graphics hardware for building affordable and socially useful computing platforms. He added that several innovations were required to implement the design on a standard FPGA board.
SO, WHAT IS A MICRO-GPU?
In simple terms, a GPU is a processor that helps electronic devices handle pictures, graphics and visual information.
The IIT Delhi team has developed a smaller, programmable version designed mainly for devices that need basic graphics and displays. Unlike large GPUs used in high-end computers, this micro-GPU is aimed at affordable embedded devices.
The researchers demonstrated the system by making it render graphics on a Spartan-7 FPGA board.
INDIA’S FIRST WORKING MICRO-GPU
The researchers said, “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first working, demonstrable indigenously designed micro-GPU from a university in India.”
It is therefore specifically about a working and demonstrable micro-GPU developed indigenously by a university team.
The technology has been designed so that it can eventually be used either on programmable hardware such as FPGAs or built into a chip.
WHERE CAN THIS MICRO-GPU BE USED?
The team sees applications in devices where affordable graphics processing is needed.
These include industrial display systems, simple human-machine interfaces, e-rickshaw dashboard navigators, navigation terminals for small fishing boats and educational e-book readers.
In other words, the technology is aimed at every day and specialised devices rather than high-end gaming computers.
Professor Kaushik Saha, from the Electrical Engineering Department, said the project encourages students to bring together arithmetic hardware, programmable architectures, compilers and embedded systems concepts within a single framework, while also addressing broader challenges related to accessibility.
WHAT IS NEXT FOR THE IIT DELHI TEAM?
The researchers are now working on a larger 8–16 core graphics processor architecture. They also plan to develop an optimised compiler and software tools to work with it.
The team is exploring a future-proof of concept using a 65nm chip-making process and plans to seek funding for chip development, system integration and eventual commercialisation.
“Our objective was to create a compact but genuinely programmable graphics-processing architecture suitable for FPGA implementation and future ASIC realisation,” Akash and Ravi Teja said.
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