India in the field of semiconductor manufacturing, addressing the challenges related to chip manufacturing

Posted on 10th Oct 2022 by rohit kumar

Semiconductor Technology Fairchild Semiconductor, a US company, had sought permission for its manufacturing plant in India in the sixth decade of the last century, but the governments of that time lacked the foresight in the country, so this company had to move its business to Malaysia and the Philippines. Otherwise, today India would have been the superpower of this industry. In the year 1984, the government started its operation by forming Semiconductor Complex Limited in Mohali and for the next half a decade it also got work from many foreign institutions, in which the contract for computer manufacturing by BBC was in discussion, but due to lack of research, it was manufacturing. The plant relied on America.

 

The mysterious fire at this company left the country's semiconductor manufacturing behind for almost a decade, leaving India out of competition in the sector. Today the situation is that in the year 2021, India imported chips worth $ 21 billion and this import is increasing at the rate of 15 percent every year. Every year, India imports chips worth $7 billion from China alone. Due to the tension with China, this expenditure for India is not only economic but also strategic, because this weakness can be taken advantage of by China. Smartphones, cameras, laptops, or any electronic gadget is powered by a chip.

 

lead industrial development

 

The global industry of making electronic silicon chips has become a big business of $ 600 billion by 2022. Even the big countries of the world have joined the competition to establish their dominance over this industry. The chip in all electronic devices acts as a brain and is also called an Integrated Circuit or Microchip or Semiconductor Chip. These electronic semiconductor chips have dominated all the areas leading today's industrial development, such as communications, computing, medical services, military services, transportation, and pure energy.

 

The development of semiconductors has become a benchmark of today's industrial revolution, as it has become the basis of a new era of technology-based development. Controlled by the US: The semiconductor industry mainly consists of three levels, design, manufacturing, and packaging. Currently, the design of this industry is completely controlled by the US, but manufacturing and assembly are dominated by the East Asian countries of Taiwan and South Korea, which China has been increasingly trying to grab over time with large investments. China has almost a monopoly on the packaging, with even large US companies such as Apple relying on China for their packaging.

 

The direction of self-reliance in the semiconductor industry

 

Packaging means making useful devices using this chip. The surprising thing is that the whole world was completely dependent on the monopolies of these countries, but the potential crisis was understood when the chip industry of America, China, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan recently faced a crisis due to Corona and Global supply chains were affected in a big way. Taiwan and South Korea, on the other hand, account for 70 percent of the world's chip manufacturing.

 

During the crisis of China and North Korea respectively, the manufacturing process of these two countries being affected means a crisis all over the world. All the major countries are realizing the need to become self-supporting in the research and manufacturing of the electronic chip industry after the Kovid epidemic, so billions of dollars are being invested in this area. In this sequence, moving towards self-reliance in the semiconductor industry, meaningful steps have been taken by the US, Japan, India, and Australia in the direction of joint research and manufacturing under Quad. By working jointly in the field of availability of their workforce and technical cooperation, these four countries have set a goal to establish a monarchy in the competitiveness of the chip industry by challenging China's increasing dominance in this field.

 

5 billion dollar economy

 

The present semiconductor industry can play an important role in fulfilling the dream of making India a five-billion-dollar economy. The global sales of the semiconductor industry in the year 2020 were $439 billion. In this highly complex industrial structure industry, those involved in design-based work are called fabless companies, and those involved in manufacturing are called foundries.

 

There are only a few companies in the world that do all the work in this industry from design to manufacturing and assembly themselves, such companies are called Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDM). To make this semiconductor industry economical, different levels of its entire value chain are done by different companies and at present, no country in the world is involved in all the tasks from design to assembly. You have become independent. The countries which will have the power of research, production, and consumption of the semiconductor industry will lead this industry all over the world.

 

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