India to get its first chip fabrication plant?

Our country is the second most populated country in the world, so naturally in a digital India, the need for digital devices is immense. So, to empower them, at the core of any electronic device is the processor or SoC, which built from wafers and currently makers like Samsung, TSMC are the leaders in this segment.

A chip manufacturing plant is a resource-intensive task but ultimately drives investment from various companies who use these wafers to make processors, GPUs, mobile SoCs and a lot more. India heavily relies on Taiwan for semiconductors, so does the rest of the world but a country like India has the labour to support a chip plant.

It seems finally India is considering this opportunity to act together to finally make this happen. As per Times of India’s latest article, India is considering this because it imports almost 65% of the electronic items from China and anything coming from the country is considered to be a security threat.

Here’s what the articles states:

The expressions of interest (Eol) shows we are really serious now,” VK Saraswat, member of the Niti AnyoR, said at a webinar organised last week by Times Tuchles, together with the India Electronics & Semiconductor Association (IESA).

Saraswat said previous attempts by India to establish chip fabs failed because the government’s policy was to reimburse costs only after the private sector set up a project “The country has realised that there’s no way other than for the government to make upfront investments,” he said.

Saurabh Gaur, Joint secretary In the electronics & IT ministry, said the Eol response has been good but said he could not disclose details yet he said India accounts for 5% of global semiconductor demand. The country’s demand for 28 nm (a measure of the size of transistors in a chip) semiconductor nodes and higher ones are in excess of $25 billion.

“And if a typical fab output is of say 3-4 billion, then we see space for fabs that can be ready in the next 23 years,” he said.

But almost every panellist, including Gaur, indicated that India’s best opportunities are in what are called compound semiconductors those made of two or more elements, like allium nitride, allium arsenide, silicon carbide. These are used in a variety of media products, and these fabs cost much less set up than the traditional fabs.

If India progresses in this direction, surely in the coming few years, India could indeed setup a semiconductor plant, which in turn will attract companies to invest in the soil. In a fast pacing digital world, this could be a gamechanging move if India somehow manages to do things in a right way possible.