Give wings to India’s chip dreams, minister tells students | Hyderabad News – Times of India

HYDERABAD: India is aiming to produce its first commercial-scale semiconductor chip by year-end, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said, adding that eight out of 20 chips designed by students – including some from IIT Hyderabad, were succesfully ‘taped out’. Taping out signifies the completion of a chip’s design phase and commencement of its manufacturing process.The union minister was addressing IITH students during the institute’s convocation ceremony held on Friday. A total of 1,273 students received their degrees.“You are entering a period of uncertainty, but also opportunity. There is huge turmoil in the outside world, but your foundation and value system will lead our country forward.”He mentioned developments under the India AI Mission and said India built its own 4G telecom stack, which is ready to be upgraded to 5G. Speaking about railways, he referred to Kavach, an automatic train protection system developed in Hyderabad and now being implemented across the country.B S Murty, Director, said, “IITH was granted the status of Institute of National Eminence and recorded its highest annual research and development funding in 2024-25.” He also highlighted the graduation of students from newly introduced programmes focused on emerging areas of science and technology. Rahul Ramachandran, a student of the dept of computer science and engineering, was awarded the President of India’s Gold Medal. The convocation marked the graduation of first batches from several new programmes: BTech in biotech and bioinformatics, computational engineering, and industrial chemistry; MTech in quantum and solid-state devices and sustainable engineering; MSc in medical physics; and the first PhD scholar in AI.