Compound interest

India's advancements are strengthened by the fact that these chips require neither multibillion-dollar fabs nor high scale

- BY LT COL AKSHAT UPADHYAY

WHEN IT COMES to modern warfare, there are specific requirements that a silicon-based chip may not be able to fulfill. In order to illustrate the requirements and the need for a specific class of chips, let's take the functionalities of a drone on the modern battlefield. This drone will require four specific capabilities: persistence or the ability to hover and traverse the battlefield for a longer duration both spatially and temporally; precision for detection and identification; lethality for targeting; and connectivity for relaying data across networks, domains and formations.

Persistence requires high temperature tolerance (there are three sources of heat: chips themselves, workings of motor coil and propellers, and atmospheric friction). So, for longer duration and ranges, capacity to withstand heat has to be catered for. Silicon chips have a temperature tolerance of around 150 degrees Celsius, after which they enter 'thermal runaway'—they become conductors, leading to short circuits.

Precision requires the ability to both detect and identify targets at longer ranges, which implies the need for higher frequency and hence a high electron velocity. However, higher frequencies have limited ranges. So greater power density is required to ensure that the signal reaches the intended target and is reflected back with adequate strength for the detection process to be completed.