Semiconductors in India – All you need to know!!

What are Semiconductors? In the simplest of terms, Silicon, on which stuff like electronic patterns & devices could be put on.

These high electronic patterns (like transistors) are printed to direct current through them. This component in due course, has become lighter and lighter, that now it can fit into smaller devices like smartphones.

THE PROCESS!

1. Silicon crystals are taken.

2. Introduction of impurities into silicon crystals is known as Doping.

3. These are further processed and result in WAFERS. These wafers house a variety of transistors, which are electronic devices to manage the Conductivity and Resistivity of current.

This is how modern smartphones with storage capacity of 256GB evolved from Early computers with just 5MB storage. The power of Miniaturization!

Indians are good at designing wafers, but not in manufacturing.

In layman terms, Indians are well versed in deciding what needs to be put on the wafers, but no so good in making them.

The following are the sequence of steps on how Indians work in Semiconductors:

1. Indian Engineers design chips
2. The designs are sent to Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and China
3. They print these designs on Wafers in their manufacturing units.
4. Finally, India imports them as Chips!
   • The import value amounted to $21 billion as of 2019, and this goes up by 15% every year.

Even the names vary based on the respective functions.

1. Companies that only design chips are called FABLESS (Fabs)
2. Companies that only manufacture chips are called FOUNDRIES
3. Those companies which perform both designing and manufacturing are called Integrated Device Manufacturers.

India’s prominence is still not well established as FOUNDRIES and Integrated Device Manufacturers. Today, Only FAB companies exist in India as of now.

WHY IS THIS SLOW PACE TO FLOURISH INDIAN SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY?

A Taiwanese podcaster had said, “India had all the chances to setup Chip manufacturing Industry as earlier than the present, but the country failed to do so”.

Any Industry needs,

1. Financial capital
2. Human capital
3. Government providing Infrastructure
4. Manufacturing technology

Among the 4, India did not have the technology to manufacture. Even the Western nations, including Japanese did not come in for the aid.

Today, the smallest chip produced in the world is of the size of 2nm. IBM’s 2-nanometer chip technology puts 50 billion transistors, each the size of roughly five atoms, on a space no bigger than your fingernail.

India has reached a level to design and produce the chips of size 800nm. The country would require yet another 10 years to cover this gap. Till then , the struggle for sustenance in the industry will continue to exist.

For more articles,

1. Foxconn- Vedanta Joint venture collapse- https://www.scrolledstories.com/2023/07/indias-chip-dream-a-setback.html
2. ECONOMY ARTICLES – https://www.scrolledstories.com/category/economy
3. ENVIRONMENT ARTICLES – https://www.scrolledstories.com/category/environment

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