NEW DELHI: The chips may have been down at India’s computer hardware sector for some time now, but an ambitious government programme is looking to change that.

Top scientists at some of the country’s ace scientific institutions are pooling energies, and the government some money, in an attempt to design a home-grown microprocessor, which they hope will ward off the rising threat of espionage into strategic segments like defence, telecom and space.

The project to make the India Microprocessor, as it is being tentatively called, will see scientists from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and IIT Delhi coming together under the aegis of the department of IT.

An entity, to be called Zerone Corporation for now and with an initial investment of $200 million, will carry out the project, according to a government official involved in the process. A draft proposal in this regard is likely to be presented to the cabinet soon requesting funds, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Zerone, which will start operations from the facilities of a government-owned company, is also expected to give a leg up to India’s struggling semiconductor industry.

Demand for microchips from India’s booming technology sector is expected to touch $315 billion by 2015, but a semiconductor policy of previous years to encourage firms to manufacture them locally evoked little interest from the private sector.

However, the current plan has national security as the first priority, especially after reports of a global network of Chinese hackers breaking into sensitive installations worldwide, including the headquarters of Dalai Lama in Dharamshala and telecom networks in the UK. Just a week ago, South Korea had complained of an organised effort by North Korea to hack its government network.

The government document, a copy of which is with ET, presents several such scenarios. If the Indian Army's WAN (Wide Area Network) is cut off from other networks, hypothetically the army’s equipment can still be activated wirelessly by foreign parties to transfer information or compromise it, the document says.

“Unless India has its own microprocessor, we can never ensure that networks (that require microprocessors) such as telecom, Army WAN, and microprocessors used in BARC, ISRO, in aircraft such as Tejas, battle tanks and radars are not compromised,” the document points out.

It further cites recent UK reports that have raised concerns over importing a Chinese telecom major’s equipment for use in Britain’s telecom network, which may lead to espionage or a shut down during a war.

A consultative process is already on to decide the chip architecture and finalise the final name of the corporation along with other modalities. The revenue source of Zerone is likely to be from the sales and support of microprocessors and by providing training on the advanced technological architecture.

The India Microprocessor is likely to adopt Sun Microsystem’s Open Sparc open source chip design technology, along with Linux operating system and MySQL database software.

The chip could also help India develop a low-cost mobile phone, worth say just Rs 500, high-tech defence precision systems and a host of other applications in areas including healthcare and weather forecasting.

“Apart from defence sector, it will be a shot in the arm for the $10-billion IT hardware industry, if the government is successful in its move,” said Vinnie Mehta, executive director of hardware industry body MAIT, who was present at a recent meeting on the issue.

The meeting was presided by Prithviraj Chauhan, minister for science and technology, a week after the new government took charge.

“Whether the technology from foreign companies will continue to be available in future is uncertain. Basic research for an India microprocessor has been going on with a small team,” said an official with CSIR, who didn’t want to be named. He added that to make a microprocessor with complementary hardware, India would need a team of over 400 people.

The director-general of CSIR, Prof Brahmachari, a key player in this project, was unavailable for comment for this story.

According to Ramkumar Subramaniam, vice-president for sales & marketing at AMD India, private companies would like to work with the government on this. “A similar partnership was forged by AMD with the Chinese government for licensing key x86 microprocessor technology that helped them develop embedded computer solutions,” he said.

Poornima Shenoy, president of Indian Semiconductor Association, said the outsourced chip design industry in India was about $8 billion currently, and most of the intellectual property rests with companies based overseas.

“History has shown that the need for defence security has sparked a chip industry in most nations,” she said.

Unlike the US and China, India still does not have chip-making technology, and Zerone seeks to change that.

Initially, the land and building would be provided by the government while the company will be 80% owned by the government and 20% by employees. However, the fabrication of chips will be outsourced to a private foundry overseas, as India still does not have one.

Over the next two years, the stake is proposed to be relaxed to 49% for government, with 31% to be held by private IT hardware companies and the corporation’s strategic domestic customers. The proposed company is expected to hire only Indian nationals to work on the project.