India's latest fab push pegged at $5 billion

4/22/2011 2:20 PM EDT

This is a hardcore fact that India is still nowhere in the semiconductor chip and product manufacturing, It needs simultaneous development of both streams VLSI Development and Embedded Systems Development with Manufacturing Facilities it that happens then India can be compared with Japan, Taiwan and China, as these Asian countries are way ahead in comparison with present conditions of India in semiconductor industries.

4/22/2011 8:36 PM EDT

As an embedded engineer with a huge interest in ASICs, I for one would love to see India in the ASIC sector. I think manufacturing in India is a little on the difficult in though. I was born in India, bought up in the US, and I have all my family in India. When I go and visit, the sheer challenges I see in order to make manufacturing work, are far too great a risk. Infrastructure, corruption, and overall wellness of people probably will come in the way for at least the next 20 years before manufacturing can become mainstream there. Till then, there is always the software and the back end office bzness. -Jigish Shukla www.knownfo.com

4/23/2011 4:10 AM EDT

I agree with the comments posted by Kinnar and Jigish. This is a shame that Indian Govt. is doing nothing about it. There was news about a couple of years (or more) back that there would be FAB city built in Hyderabad, India. Real estate developers bought lands around the proposed sites like crazy. Engineers started hoping for the best. Ultimately the only gainers were the corrupted politicians. Everything died down eventually. Even the news like this doesn't excite me anymore.

4/23/2011 11:47 AM EDT

Commercial success of any needed manfacturing process are based on two important factors such as quality and cost. This comes by having good experienced talented hands. There is a big shortage of such talents. Even though Indian Government is willing to invest in foundaries identifying a winner team is much difficult and many decisions regarding this are kept pending.

4/24/2011 7:54 AM EDT

I am cautiously hopeful about this. Such initiative have bear no fruits in the past. But one thing is sure that without any world class fab and infrastructure, India cannot lead in high end electronics and applied Science related research.

4/24/2011 11:08 AM EDT

Good to see that there is a committee and they are attracting investors. Wish there will be at least one fab in the next 5 years.

4/24/2011 12:03 PM EDT

India needs fab house. It need not be 28 nm / 40 nm and 400 mm. But the need of hour is fab house for some critical and confidential projects in defense and space industry. They should be able to do this.

4/24/2011 11:31 PM EDT

At least one Fab is needed for India to keep it's Defence projects rolling and R&D of several universities gain real momentum and do some critical work. But that apart I see no merit in setting up a Fab to compete with other big commercial Fabs because simply you can't beat the chinese on cost.

4/24/2011 11:40 PM EDT

In fact, India had one good fab, named SCL - Semiconductor Complex Limited. Government invested $2B+ in that complex and was doing very well. They also got some very good projects from Indian defence and space program (hi-rel GaAs FET and in microwave remote sensing). They were quite successful at it and in mood of expanding it. However, SCL got into fire and whole facility became defunct. As generally reported, they indicated sabotage from .... Scientific community was quite dissapointed. After they have some new research fabs, but they need to have more to avoid further sudden death of critical programs.

4/25/2011 3:57 AM EDT

atlast we would compete China on Semicon. This is very good initiative but Government have to push the decision very fast and move on.

4/25/2011 9:50 AM EDT

The big question -- that remains unanswered -- is who is going to provide the $5 billion that the Indian government has said is necessary to create two wafer fabs?

Reading between the lines, while the Indian government is working out the cost of getting the country into IC manufacturing they are also looking for some sort of deal that would keep their contribution as low as possible.

While some chip manufacturers may be willing to donate manufacturing processes I don't see any of them forming a line to actually put hard currency down.

Any thoughts?

4/25/2011 5:38 PM EDT

India strengths lie not in infrastructure development and manufacturing, but in service-dominated markets. The deep-rooted reasons are not necessary to reiterate, and are well known. If there is motivation for manufacturing, it should, will, and must come from customer interest and drive. That stipulates a well-defined and monetized need. That interest can capture the accountability often lacking and historically usurped by intermediaries involved in Indian government subsidized and other large-scale projects.

The new markets in traditional high-volume semiconductor manufacturing are quickly diminishing with competition extremely fierce. Should a need evolve in a niche area -- silicon sensors, LED's, RF devices, custom ASIC's, then perhaps there will be an opportunity, incentive, willingness, and even financial support to plant a seed. If that need can be supplanted by custom (service-based) engineering, then India has a potential to be competitive where others cannot be.

There is no doubt that manufacturing in India has enormous potential, but the rules of the game in India are very different than in Far East Asia and in burgeoning parts of Europe.

4/30/2011 2:10 AM EDT

As Hm said India had started Semiconductor Complex Ltd at Chandigarh with 5 micron line width technology. After the fire, I have no idea what happened to that unit. It seems to have become a lab.

I wish TCS, Infosys, Wipro and HCL can join hands and easily manage $ 5 billion from their annual net profit to start a fab. With rampant corruption in the government, any effort would only fatten a few individuals. I even feel that people like Narayana Moorthy and Azim Premji can lead such an organization. They can even form a TRUST organization rather than a commercial one.

They can start with proper Techno-economic Feasibility Studies and implement with backward integration to enter the market immediately. Using the existing design skills from India, we can initially get the products from contract manufacturers to our design. Simultaneously, we can start the fab also. Huge design work can engage the present software industry like Infosys, Wipro and TCS.

India has failed in hardware area in all these years in spite of several attempts by people like PSI (Vinay L Deshpande of Simputer). Even today, only the software industry can support such massive effort. After all, what will they do with their billion dollar net profit?

Are Narayana Moorthy and Azim Premji listening?

Jai Hind

4/30/2011 6:33 AM EDT

In today's news paper in India, it says: The planning commission on Friday said the government will soon set-up two semiconductor wafer plants of total worth Rs. 50K Crores (~US$11 billion).
Minister of the State for Planning Ashwani Kumar told, "The facilities are intended to breach the mismatch between demand and supply for electronic hardware in the country and are intended to act as a catalyst for fulfilling the 12th Plan (2012-17) target of 11-12% growth in manufacturing sector". By "mismatch between demand and supply", he means that in 20-30 years India’s import bill of electronic hardware may well exceed the import bill of fuel and oil!

5/10/2011 9:45 AM EDT

One issue I did not see mentioned in the article, is that when other nations were building up their native semiconductor capabilities, India insisted that ALL capital equipment used in the fabs had to be manufactured domestically. This capability most likely still does not exist.

This, according to an expat semiconductor process Engineer from India, was the main obstacle to the building of a viable Indian semiconductor industry.

The resulting exodus of Engineering talent, may in no small part, be instrumental in the growth of the semiconductor industry in "Silicon Valley."