Dreamchip announces plan for India's own processor based tablet SoC

INDIA: In perhaps a first for any Indian company so far, Dreamchip Electronics Pvt Ltd, a fabless semiconductor company founded in 2012, has announced plans for launching SoCs for tablet computers.
The SoCs come in three different variants named Siddhi, Vani and Sandesh. Each one of these has been specified and optimized for a distinct tablet application. Dreamchip will use a proprietary multi-core 32-bit RISC and DSP processor architecture and a unique optimized direct connect architecture for powering these SoCs.

Siddhi is designed to power basic student's book reader tablets that are optimized for low cost large volume applications. Siddhi powered tablets are expected to replace printed text books. Vani is targeted towards advanced student's multi-media tablets that offer a rich multi-media experience for students. Sandesh the high-end SoC is optimized for use in citizen-centric e-governance and e-commerce tablets.

All of the SoCs are designed to help Indian EMCs cater to the needs of rural as well as value conscious urban users and will be accompanied by reference tablet designs and embedded software with the option to support different Indian languages.

Solutions from Dreamchip are expected to play a critical role by enabling EMCs to create world class tablet computers and offer them to customers in India and the rest of the world at competitive rates. All the SoCs are expected to be priced in Indian Rupees for the Indian market thereby eliminating risk from exchange rate fluctuations for EMCs.

"Following the encouraging response from prospective customers Dreamchip Electronics is initially targeting the large and fast growing Indian market. Dreamchip plans to offer the SoCs globally at a later stage" said Gopi Kumar Bulusu, founder director at Dreamchip.

"From various technical discussions with Dreamchip Electronics, we believe that the new SoC platforms from Dreamchip will enable quick Innovation and shorten product development cycles" said a senior executive at TVS Electronics Limited.

Prototyping platforms for all three variants will be available by Q3 calendar year 2013 on the Teraptor Consumer Electronics Channel. Select customers are expected to receive early access FPGA Kits and test chips by Q1/Q3 2014, respectively.