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It is a big day in the history of Indian science. Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) and Semiconductor Complex Ltd, Chandigarh along with Aligarh Muslim University have come up with India's first indigenously designed and manufactured microchip named MANAS.

Multiplexed ANAlog Signal (MANAS) processor has been accepted as the best possible chip internationally and will be used in a project at CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory in Geneva. "After we have come up with MANAS the image of India has changed in the world. This country has always been known for its work in the software sector but we have not been able to do much in the hardware part so long. This is the first sep towards the new technology of indigenous chip development in India," said Bikash Sinha, Director, SINP.

CERN will be studying what happened just after 1 microsecond of 'Big Bang'. To study this phenomenon CERN will recreate a 'Little Bang' in its laboratory at Geneva where MANAS will be used to scan and take 1000 snap shots per second of the collision happening in the laboratory with the help of ALICE detector. "The scientists will use the images taken with the help of MANAS to find out from where the particles are coming out and where it is going. Through this we will not only be able to find out how earth evolved but will also be able to trace the evoluation of the universe till date," added Sinha.

The chip has already been tested in Singapore, France, Italy and Russia. "CERN is an extremely competitive place and only after it was acceptable to the world scientists the chip was accepted. Now people in other countries look up to us," said Sinha.

SNIP has produced 110,000 (One lakh ten thousand) chips already and the experiment at CERN with the help of MANAS is scheduled to begin from November this year. "We got the project in 1996. Apart from the project in CERN this chip will help the civilisation to discover many more things in the years to come," said Sukalyan Chattopadhyay, head of the department of High Energy Physics at SNIP and head of this project.

The chip would be costing $10 each. It is 7mm x 7mm in dimension and has 10,000 transistors in it. Another plus point of MANAS is that it has 16 channels, which means that it can pick up signals from 16 places.

The data resolving power achieved by MANAS chip can be easily compared with the best of the world and can be used for detection of cancerous tumour.

"Sometimes even MRI and CAT scan cannot detect tissue tumours. Since MANAS is an extremely high power scanner it can detect them very easily. If used for medical scanning it will not only give accurate results but will even cost less for the patients. We are trying to market this chip for medical purposes too," said Sinha. Apart from this MANAS can be used in the airport scanners and in any other device, which has anything to do with scanning. 

(mou.hindustantimes@yahoo.com)