On March 5, 2025, India achieved a key milestone in space technology when ISRO and the Semiconductor Laboratory (SCL) in Chandigarh showcased two powerful 32-bit microprocessors, VIKRAM3201 and KALPANA3201. Shri S. Krishnan, Secretary of MeitY, officially handed over the first production lots of these indigenous processors to Dr. V. Narayanan, Secretary, DOS and Chairman, ISRO, at a special function in New Delhi.
The processors were developed in collaboration between ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) and SCL and are intended for high-reliability applications in space missions. Dr. Unnikrishnan Nair, Director of VSSC, along with key design teams, attended the event.
VIKRAM3201, built at SCL’s 180nm CMOS semiconductor fab, is India’s first wholly indigenous 32-bit microprocessor. It is an improved version of the VIKRAM1601, a 16-bit microprocessor that has been used in ISRO’s launch vehicle avionics since 2009. The new processor improves computing efficiency for launch programs by enabling floating-point calculation and supporting the Ada programming language.
The KALPANA3201, based on the IEEE 1754 Instruction Set Architecture, is a 32-bit SPARC V8 RISC processor meant to work with open-source software toolsets. ISRO also received more jointly created equipment, such as reconfigurable data acquisition systems and integrated circuits.
