Strategic necessity: India is seeking to become a chip design hub - ET Telecom
China, for example, is building a homegrown chip programme, eyeing adoption of local semiconductors in 70% of its products by 2025, up from 16% curren..
- India has been taking quiet but tentative steps towards indigenous chip design capability for a few years now despite the many teething problems, as it looks at homegrown chip development as a strategic necessity.
- Several attempts were made to build a semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem, including talks with leading chip manufacturers AMD and TSMC to set up a fab in the country, in tune with the thinking globally, wherein countries realized that local chip development helps protect their strategic interests.
- India, for its part, is seeking to create a homegrown fabless semiconductor design ecosystem, and is harnessing local talent and helping nurture academic institutions as well as startups.
- Over the last two decades, many global semiconductor companies such as ARM, Qualcomm, Intel, Cadence and Texas Instruments have set up design and software development infrastructure here, helping create a critical mass of talent that understands chip development.
- The government wants to use that talent to help entrepreneurs work on chip design and a fabless semiconductor ecosystem.
- The research and development effort, driven both by governmentfunded academic institutions as well as homegrown technology entrepreneurs, is focusing on promoting domestic manufacturing.