Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi have developed what they describe as India’s first working, demonstrable indigenously designed micro-Graphics Processing Unit (micro-GPU).
The development could support the creation of home-grown graphics and display-processing systems for embedded applications. GPUs are widely used in modern computing, including artificial intelligence and machine learning systems. NDTV
The team demonstrated programmable graphics rendering using a custom floating-point GPU engine, implemented entirely in Register Transfer Language (RTL) and mapped onto a Spartan-7 FPGA platform. The architecture is designed to be scalable and programmable and can potentially be adapted for ASICs or other programmable hardware. NDTV
According to IIT Delhi, the technology could have applications in industrial control displays, human-machine interfaces, e-rickshaw dashboard navigators, inland-water navigation systems and educational e-book readers, particularly where affordable embedded visualisation is required. NDTV
The project represents a step toward developing indigenous graphics-processing hardware for specialised applications. The research team is also exploring a future roadmap involving an 8–16 core vector-style graphics processor, along with an optimised compiler and graphics software toolchain
