Posts of CEO, CTO and CFO have just been advertised for ISM. India Semiconductor Mission(ISM) is an independent and specialised nodal agency being set up by the Government of India with a mandate to drive strategies for the development of a sustainable semiconductor and display ecosystem. These and many other posts are expected to rope in global experts to contribute to nation-building.
Today’s digitization race-winning strategy requires new electronic systems whose power consumption is low and battery backup is high, speed is very high and new designs should roll out fast, and of course, all of it should be affordable for the masses.
VLSI or very large scale integration is the stream of electronics that helps in achieving these systems by shrinking their size that is used in remotes of television, cell phone, microwave oven, AC, washing machines, Cars, space ships, aviation, weather forecast, satellites, defence and many other domains of modern life.
So far India manufactures chips for defence and space research at fabs present within IISc, SCL Mohali, and few others places. Large scale manufacturing for consumer electronics and other high-tech industries though is altogether a different ball game. The technical complexity of the domain, huge investment requirements, availability of the purest form of silica ( raw material), very stringent cleanliness requirements at the manufacturing site as well as huge water and uninterrupted power supply needs of this industry pose a real challenge for India to match the competition of Taiwan, South Korea and China.
IIT Kharagpur has one of the first VLSI labs in India, where R&D efforts in this domain and chip design seem to have come to an age with the Centre of Excellence in Nanoelectronics at IIS Bangalore, IIT Bombay and other institutions doing excellent work. Domestic semiconductor consumption has been consistently growing at a healthy rate and the need of the hour is accelerated progress on setting up chip manufacturing companies (also known as fab). In addition to meeting the challenges of technical complexity, Investment requirement is huge for any semiconductor fab unit. The electronic sector is one of the domains where 100% FDI is allowed under automatic route. Chipmakers are likely to get support beyond normal PLIs if they are really committed to India.
Aatmanirbharta Bharat is clearly aiming to cover the lost ground and make India one of the leaders in this essential domain of modern civilisation. Ministry of Electronics and Information (MeitY) has sought applications from 100 academia, R&D organisations, start-ups and MSMEs under its Chips to Startup (C2S) Programme. A Cabinet committee chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had initiated this program to usher in a new era in electronics manufacturing by providing a globally competitive incentive package to companies in semiconductors and display manufacturing as well as design.
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