  Glass based Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) are going to be used as an active
element in the Iron Calorimeter (ICAL) experiment at the India based Neutrino
Observatory (INO), which is being constructed to study atmospheric neutrinos.
Though the RPC detector operational parameters are more or less finalized, the
readout electronics is being developed using various technologies. The ICAL
experiment will consist of about 29,000 RPC detectors of 2 m $\times$ 2 m in
size with each detector having 64 readout channels both in the X and Y
directions. The present study focusses on multi-channel electronics based on
SiGe 350 nm technology as an option for the INO-ICAL RPC detectors. The study
includes commissioning and usage of frontend application specific integrated
circuit (ASIC) HARDROC chip in which 64 channels are handled independently to
perform zero suppression. We present first testbench results using the HARDROC
chip with the aim to use it finally in the ICAL experiment.
