He said that India has a huge talent pool for semiconductor design and a large number of design patents and intellectual property rights (IPRs) are produced in the country by design engineers. .
“The total budget allocation for chip design related activities/programs in the current financial year is Rs 100 crore,” Vaishnaw said.
He said the government is focusing on broadening and deepening the electronic systems design and manufacturing (ESDM) sector with semiconductor design as one of the priority areas.
Currently, facilities for manufacturing semiconductor wafers for strategic needs are available at the SemiConductor Laboratory (SCL), Mohali; Gallium Arsenide Enabling Technology Center (GAETEC), Hyderabad and Society for Integrated Circuit Technology and Applied Research (SITAR), Bengaluru, the minister said.
To boost the development of semiconductors, the government has approved the “establishment of a center and incubator for the gallium nitride (GaN) ecosystem for high-power and high-frequency electronics”.
The project is implemented by the Society for Innovation and Development (SID) under the auspices of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) at the Center for Nanoscience and Engineering (CeNSE), Bengaluru at the full cost of project of Rs 298.66 crore.
“An application to implement NAND Flash Assembly, Testing, Marking, and Packaging (ATMP) has been approved under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) program for the large-scale electronic manufacturing,” Vaishnaw said.
He said that an application for discrete semiconductor devices including transistors, diodes, thyristors, etc. and the System-in-Package (SIP) has been approved under the PLI program for large-scale electronics manufacturing.
