By The 3rd Digital India RISC-V (DIR-V) Symposium 2026 opened at IIT Madras’s Research Park in Chennai on Saturday, August 1, and continues through August 2, 2026.
The two-day event, organised jointly by IIT Madras, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and RISC-V International, has brought together policymakers, technology experts, researchers, startups, investors, faculty and students.
The symposium’s theme, ‘Empowering Bharat’s Semiconductor Future,’ covers indigenous processor technologies, secure computing systems, hardware innovation, artificial intelligence and the country’s growing RISC-V ecosystem.
Sessions include keynote addresses, technical talks, panel discussions, hands-on workshops, technology demonstrations, exhibitions and startup showcases, along with the DIR-V Grand Challenge Hackathon spotlighting RISC-V-based work from students and startups.
In-person registration closed on July 26, 2026, after the venue filled to capacity, but the event is being live-streamed on YouTube, with no registration needed to watch the stream.
RISC-V’s open-standard architecture, which carries no licensing fees, has made it a key focus of India’s push to develop indigenous chip design capability and reduce reliance on imported processors.
Previous editions of the DIR-V symposium have drawn participation from chip designers, academic researchers and government officials, reflecting the event’s role as a meeting point for India’s RISC-V ecosystem.
MeitY has separately backed the development of indigenous RISC-V-based processors under its Digital India programme, part of a broader effort to build chip design capability alongside manufacturing incentives.
The Chennai event follows two earlier editions of the DIR-V symposium, each of which expanded in scale as more startups, research institutions and global chip companies engaged with India’s RISC-V initiatives.
RISC-V is an open-standard instruction set architecture that has drawn growing interest from chipmakers worldwide because, unlike proprietary architectures, it can be used and modified without licensing fees.
India’s semiconductor push has gathered pace over the past two years, with the government backing fabrication units, chip design centres and research programmes aimed at reducing reliance on imported processors.
Photo by Tester051005, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
