India's semiconductor conversation is usually framed around fabs, process nodes and billions of rupees of investment.
Those things matter. But there is another resource that may matter even more in the long term: people who know how to build the hardware and software that go into those fabs.
India already has a large and capable software workforce. It has experience in programming, simulation, verification, cloud infrastructure, embedded software and mathematical modelling. What India has historically lacked is the same depth of accumulated industrial experience in semiconductor design, reusable hardware IP, verification, advanced packaging and hardware-software co-design.
That gap creates an unusual opportunity.
Across Europe, a collection of open-source and publicly supported projects is beginning to build exactly those foundational layers. RISC-V processors, accelerators, interconnects, memory systems, hardware abstraction, software-defined systems, open government workspaces and advanced FD-SOI process technology are developing in parallel.
India does not need to wait until all of these capabilities exist domestically before participating.
It should join the learning process now.
Europe Is Building More Than Individual Open-Source Projects
At first glance, Europe's digital-sovereignty efforts can look fragmented.
France has been developing open government and workplace software. Germany has been funding critical open-source infrastructure. The Netherlands is pursuing digital autonomy for government and developing DAWO, an open government workplace based around NixOS, with components covering the operating system, fleet management, AI, cloud, identity and collaboration software. The Dutch government has explicitly identified digital autonomy, open source and reducing strategic dependencies as policy objectives.
At the hardware level, projects such as RIGOLETTO are developing open RISC-V-based platforms.
And beneath that, Europe is investing in semiconductor technologies such as FD-SOI.
Individually, these projects are useful.
Together, they begin to resemble something much more important: the foundations of a sovereign computing stack.
RIGOLETTO Is Particularly Interesting
RIGOLETTO is not simply another attempt to design a RISC-V processor.
Its stated objective is to create a complete open RISC-V hardware platform that European chipmakers, Tier-1 suppliers and automotive manufacturers can share and extend. The project covers processor cores, AI and machine-learning accelerators, interconnects, memory hierarchies and peripheral subsystems, while also concentrating on standardisation and interoperability. It is scheduled to run from July 2025 to July 2028 and involves 72 partners.
That is important because a processor by itself is not a computing platform.
A usable platform requires:
- CPU cores
- accelerators
- memory systems
- interconnects
- peripherals
- security
- firmware
- compilers
- operating-system support
- drivers
- verification
- development tools
- standards
RIGOLETTO is therefore attacking the much harder problem of making open hardware usable as an ecosystem.
That is precisely the direction India should be watching.
The Most Important Part May Be What Happens After 2028
RIGOLETTO's July 2028 end date should not be interpreted as the end of the knowledge it creates.
The European open-hardware ecosystem is already creating mechanisms for projects to feed into one another. The Eclipse Foundation reports that the European Unified RISC-V IP Access Platform, launched in January 2026, brings together verified RISC-V artifacts from projects including TRISTAN, ISOLDE and RIGOLETTO into a common collection.
That is a crucial development.
A publicly funded research project can disappear from the headlines when its grant ends. But its engineers, code, IP, documentation, verification environments, standards work and relationships can continue.
The real output of a project such as RIGOLETTO is therefore not merely a collection of processor designs.
It is a population of people who now know how to build industrial-grade open hardware.
That knowledge can move into the next project.
And then the next one.
That is how an ecosystem forms.
India Should Not Wait for the Ecosystem to Come to India
This creates a strategic choice for India.
India could attempt to construct the entire foundation independently:
- learn RISC-V from scratch
- develop processor architectures
- develop accelerators
- build verification expertise
- develop interconnects
- create hardware abstraction layers
- develop compilers
- write drivers
- learn safety certification
- develop semiconductor IP
- build design flows
- learn hardware-software co-design
Or India could participate in open international projects where much of that learning is already happening.
The second approach is not avoiding learning.
It is learning by doing.
Software May Be India's Bridge Into Hardware
This is where India's historical strengths become relevant.
India has not traditionally been a leading semiconductor manufacturing power. It has, however, developed enormous capabilities in software engineering, simulation, verification, embedded programming, mathematical modelling and large-scale IT systems.
Open hardware changes the boundary between those disciplines.
A modern chip designer does not simply draw transistors and send them to a factory. Much of the work happens through software:
- hardware description languages
- simulation
- formal verification
- test generation
- logic synthesis
- physical-design automation
- power analysis
- timing analysis
- compiler development
- firmware
- drivers
The boundary increasingly looks like this:
Software → simulation → hardware description → verification → synthesis → physical design → silicon.
That is a much more approachable learning path than simply telling a software engineer to become a semiconductor process engineer overnight.
Open PDKs Make the Bridge Even Shorter
The Google-SkyWater programme demonstrated an important part of this model.
Google and SkyWater worked on an open PDK for SkyWater's 90nm fully depleted silicon-on-insulator process, following the earlier SKY130 open-silicon effort. Google explicitly described open PDKs and manufacturing shuttles as mechanisms for developers and researchers to explore different power, performance and area trade-offs and to build real silicon.
The significance is larger than the particular 90nm process.
An engineer can move from:
software and simulation → RTL → verification → physical design → fabricated chip.
That is an educational pipeline.
It allows people who were previously separated from physical hardware by several layers of industry to begin crossing those boundaries.
India should be paying close attention to this.
Europe Is Also Developing the Other Half: FD-SOI
There is an equally interesting development happening in Europe around FD-SOI.
The FAMES pilot line is developing advanced FD-SOI technologies at 10nm and 7nm, targeting areas such as energy-efficient computing, RF, sensors, embedded memory, edge AI and other applications. Its open-access programme already provides a 10nm FD-SOI pathfinding PDK for digital-circuit evaluation, including standard-cell libraries, SPICE models and physical-verification tools.
FAMES also provides access pathways for technologies including 10nm and 7nm FD-SOI, embedded non-volatile memory, RF components, 3D integration and power-management technologies.
This does not mean that RIGOLETTO is an FD-SOI project.
It is not.
Nor should we assume that every European RISC-V processor will be manufactured using FD-SOI.
The more interesting observation is that Europe is developing open hardware and advanced low-power semiconductor technology at the same time.
Those two developments could eventually reinforce one another.
Why FD-SOI Is Particularly Interesting for India
India does not need advanced semiconductor technology only for supercomputers.
It needs enormous numbers of efficient chips for ordinary things:
- smart meters
- air conditioners
- refrigerators
- washing machines
- water purifiers
- robot vacuums
- industrial controllers
- automotive electronics
- cameras
- sensors
- wearables
- communication equipment
- edge-AI devices
- robotics
FD-SOI's attraction is therefore not simply that it can produce a fast processor.
Its attraction is that it can be part of an energy-efficient computing strategy.
That is precisely the type of technology India could deploy at enormous scale.
The Bigger Opportunity: Hardware Becomes More Software-Defined
This may be the most important insight of all.
Open hardware does not make physical hardware disappear.
Instead, it makes more of the hardware architecture accessible through software, reusable IP and programmable interfaces.
A processor core becomes an IP block.
An accelerator becomes an IP block.
An interconnect becomes an IP block.
A memory controller becomes an IP block.
A peripheral becomes an IP block.
Software then determines how these pieces are used, combined and optimised.
Hardware begins to acquire some of the characteristics of software:
- reuse
- modularity
- versioning
- testing
- repositories
- interfaces
- community contributions
- forks
- improvements
- reference implementations
This is extremely favourable to countries with large software communities.
India should not underestimate that advantage.
The Missing Step Is Participation
India's response should not simply be to create an "Indian RIGOLETTO."
That would miss the point.
The first step should be participation.
Indian universities should participate.
Indian startups should participate.
Indian semiconductor designers should participate.
Indian software engineers should participate.
Indian researchers should participate.
And individual developers should be encouraged to participate.
Not merely as users.
As contributors.
The Difference Between Consuming and Learning
There is a major difference between downloading an open-source processor and contributing to the project that develops it.
The first provides a component.
The second provides knowledge.
Consider an Indian engineer contributing to an open RISC-V project.
Initially, that engineer might work on a software tool.
Then a compiler optimisation.
Then a driver.
Then hardware verification.
Then an accelerator.
Then perhaps an entire subsystem.
After several years, the engineer has crossed a boundary that previously separated software engineering from hardware engineering.
Multiply that by thousands of engineers.
Now the country has something much more valuable than a collection of imported IP blocks.
It has human capital.
2028 Should Be a Milestone, Not a Deadline
RIGOLETTO's July 2028 completion date is therefore useful as a strategic marker.
India should not wait until July 2028 and ask:
"Can we get the finished technology?"
It should ask today:
"How many Indian engineers can participate before the project finishes?"
The objective should be to emerge from this period with people who understand:
- RISC-V architecture
- processor design
- AI accelerators
- memory systems
- interconnects
- hardware verification
- software-defined systems
- Linux integration
- drivers
- firmware
- hardware security
- automotive and industrial requirements
Then those people can carry that knowledge into industries that European projects may not be targeting directly.
From Cars to Computers
RIGOLETTO is primarily focused on automotive computing.
That does not mean its knowledge has to remain inside automobiles.
A processor architecture does not know whether it is controlling a vehicle or a washing machine.
An AI accelerator does not inherently care whether it is processing automotive sensor data or performing computer-vision inference in a robot.
An interconnect does not care whether it connects automotive subsystems or components in a laptop.
The underlying knowledge can move.
That creates a potential path for India:
European automotive open hardware → Indian engineers → Indian adaptation → Indian consumer hardware.
And the consumer hardware market is enormous.
Gen4 Could Be the Indian Reference Platform
This is where our earlier Gen4 concept becomes less speculative.
Gen4 does not need to begin as an entirely Indian invention.
It could be an Indian integration and evolution of a much larger open ecosystem.
Imagine a platform containing:
- RISC-V CPU cores
- vector processing
- open GPU technology
- NPU acceleration
- hardware video engines
- security hardware
- standard interconnects
- modern memory controllers
- Linux support
- LLVM tooling
- Mesa graphics support
- AI runtimes
- open firmware
The first implementation might use a relatively mature process.
Later implementations could migrate to more advanced nodes.
The architecture and software ecosystem should survive the process transition.
That is the real meaning of "build once, use everywhere."
28nm Does Not Have to Be the End
India's semiconductor journey could therefore look very different from the simplistic race toward the smallest possible transistor.
One possible progression could be:
28nm → mainstream volume computing
22nm/FD-SOI → efficient edge and embedded computing
14/16nm → stronger mainstream computing
7nm → high-performance mainstream and edge computing
The exact nodes and dates will depend on economics, technology transfer, domestic manufacturing capability and international partnerships.
The important thing is that the knowledge accumulated between the nodes does not disappear.
India Should Not Build Everything
This is where the idea connects directly with the earlier doctrine of India Must Learn, Not Just Consume.
Learning does not mean manufacturing every component domestically from day one.
India can use European semiconductor technology.
It can use American EDA tools.
It can use Japanese materials and equipment.
It can use Taiwanese and Korean manufacturing expertise.
It can use global open-source software.
It can participate in RISC-V projects around the world.
None of that is inherently incompatible with technological sovereignty.
The problem begins when India remains permanently unable to understand, modify, maintain or replace the critical layers on which it depends.
Participation changes that equation.
Don't Build From Zero
India often approaches technological sovereignty as if the choices were:
Build everything ourselves or remain dependent on everyone else.
That is a false choice.
There is a third option:
Join the global open technology commons, learn from it, contribute to it and eventually build domestic capabilities on top of it.
That is not dependency.
It is apprenticeship.
And apprenticeship is exactly what India needs in areas where it has historically had less hardware experience.
The Software Engineer Can Become a Hardware Engineer
This may ultimately be the most important consequence.
A young Indian engineer who begins today with Linux, Python, C++, Verilog, simulation or RISC-V does not have to remain a software-only engineer.
Open hardware can provide a gradual path:
software → simulation → RTL → verification → FPGA → ASIC → silicon.
The engineer learns by crossing each boundary.
The knowledge compounds.
Eventually, the distinction between "hardware engineer" and "software engineer" becomes less rigid.
That is precisely the type of hardware-software co-design talent that India will need if its semiconductor manufacturing ambitions are to mature into a complete technology ecosystem.
India's Opportunity Is Not to Copy Europe
India should not attempt to reproduce every European programme.
Europe has its own industrial structure, automotive industry, semiconductor companies, research institutions and strategic priorities.
India has different strengths and requirements.
India has a huge software workforce.
It has an enormous domestic market.
It has a growing electronics-manufacturing ecosystem.
It is building semiconductor manufacturing capacity.
And it has millions of potential developers who could participate in open technology.
The objective should therefore be connection rather than duplication.
Europe Can Be the Classroom; India Can Become a Laboratory
This does not mean Europe teaches and India merely learns.
The relationship should eventually become circular.
India can contribute software.
India can contribute verification.
India can contribute IP.
India can contribute hardware designs.
India can contribute deployment experience.
India can contribute new applications.
India can eventually contribute manufacturing capacity.
And Indian engineers can take what they learn into areas that are particularly important for India:
- affordable laptops
- desktops
- development boards
- smart appliances
- smart meters
- robotics
- automotive electronics
- agricultural technology
- edge AI
- home servers
- industrial automation
The Real Shortcut Is Human Capital
There is a temptation to think of technology transfer as receiving a machine, a licence or a PDK.
But the most valuable technology transfer is often invisible.
It is the engineer who learns why a design failed.
The researcher who learns how an accelerator should be verified.
The developer who learns how hardware should expose an interface to Linux.
The designer who learns how a memory hierarchy affects real workloads.
The team that learns how to turn an academic processor into industrial-grade IP.
Those people carry the knowledge wherever they go.
That is why India's participation should begin before the European projects are finished, not after.
From Participation to an Indian Open Consortium
Eventually, India may still want the larger institution we have discussed before: an open Indian hardware-and-software consortium.
But it should not begin by trying to hire thousands of people and recreate everything from scratch.
It can begin organically.
Indian contributors join international projects.
Indian universities teach the technologies.
Indian companies commercialise components.
Indian researchers develop new IP.
Government funding supports critical open infrastructure.
Those people and organisations gradually form a network.
Eventually, that network can become an Indian open technology consortium.
By then, it would not be an organisation assembled from nothing.
It would be an organisation assembled from experience.
The Larger Vision
Europe's current efforts may therefore represent something larger than European digital sovereignty.
They may be early building blocks of a global open computing ecosystem.
RISC-V provides an open architectural foundation.
Open hardware projects provide reusable IP.
Open PDK initiatives connect designs to silicon.
FD-SOI provides another path toward efficient computing.
Linux and other open-source projects provide the software foundation.
Government projects such as DAWO demonstrate that open technology can extend into real institutional infrastructure rather than remaining a hobbyist exercise.
The pieces are still fragmented.
They are still incomplete.
Some projects will fail.
Some technologies will be replaced.
Some organisations will change direction.
That is normal.
The important thing is that the knowledge and interfaces can remain open enough for the next generation to build upon them.
India Should Be There While the Foundation Is Being Poured
India does not need to wait until the open hardware ecosystem is mature.
It should participate while it is immature.
That is when contributions matter most.
That is when standards are still being shaped.
That is when relationships are being formed.
That is when engineers gain foundational experience.
And that is when India can move from being a future customer to being a present contributor.
By 2028, when RIGOLETTO reaches the end of its current project period, the most valuable Indian outcome should not be a PDF explaining what RIGOLETTO achieved.
It should be a generation of Indian engineers who can say:
"I helped build it."
From Learn to Build
This is the natural continuation of the doctrine:
India Must Learn, Not Just Consume.
Learning does not mean refusing outside technology.
It means using outside technology as a route toward deeper capability.
India does not have to build every foundation alone.
It needs to know which foundations matter, participate in building them, and eventually become capable of extending them independently.
That is why India's semiconductor strategy should not begin and end at the fab.
The fab needs designers.
Designers need IP.
IP needs software.
Software needs hardware interfaces.
Hardware needs verification.
Verification needs tools.
Tools need developers.
Developers need communities.
Communities need sustained funding.
And the entire ecosystem needs products that people actually use.
That is where our earlier Gen4 idea eventually fits: not as an isolated "Indian chip", but as a reference platform demonstrating that open hardware, open software, domestic manufacturing and real-world products can work together.
Own the Ordinary, Rent the Extraordinary
India does not need to win every semiconductor race.
It does not need to manufacture every processor.
It does not need to replace every proprietary application.
It does need to understand the foundations beneath the ordinary technology on which its society depends.
That means learning how to build processors.
Learning how to build accelerators.
Learning how to connect hardware and software.
Learning how to manufacture.
Learning how to maintain open infrastructure.
Learning how to turn research into reliable products.
And learning how to contribute those improvements back to the global commons.
The opportunity emerging in Europe is therefore not something India should watch from the sidelines.
It is a classroom, a laboratory and a community being built in real time.
India should enter while the doors are open.
Not to copy Europe.
Not to become dependent on Europe.
But to learn alongside Europe, contribute alongside Europe and eventually build capabilities that neither India nor Europe could have created as quickly alone.
Because the ultimate goal is not to own every extraordinary technology.
It is to ensure that ordinary technology is never beyond our understanding.
Don't build from zero.
Join the commons. Learn the foundations. Contribute to them. Then build on them.
That is how a software nation can begin becoming a hardware nation.
And that may be one of the fastest routes India has to genuine technological sovereignty.
