India’s Semiconductor Story A Series Of Missed Opportunities: MoS Chandrasekhar

Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, on Thursday acknowledged a series of missed opportunities that have hindered India's engagement with the semiconductor industry over the last 70 years. Blaming past socialist policies, Chandrasekhar cited instances where potential collaborations with major semiconductor players were thwarted.

During a fireside chat with AMD India chief Jaya Jagadish at Bengaluru Tech Summit, Chandrasekhar highlighted historical setbacks in semiconductor space. He said, "India's story and its relationship with semiconductors has been marked by missed opportunities. In the 1960s, Bob Noyce’s firm wanted to come to India, but our socialist policies at the time led to a refusal. Consequently, they went on to build it in Malaysia, now it is one of the largest packaging hubs in Asia."

Highlighting another instance, Chandrasekhar said, "In mid-2010, we had Intel wanting to set up a fab in India. That got thwarted by the government red tape and so on."

Despite these historical setbacks, Chandrasekhar expressed optimism about India catching up and even leapfrogging in semiconductor technology. He said, "For lack of imagination, we are now playing catch up. Funnily enough, we are almost jumping one generation and looking at opportunities for the next decade, which are really brand new types of opportunities."

Discussing recent progress, Chandrasekhar highlighted the advancements made in talent, design, packaging, and research over the last 18 to 24 months. "We are going to set up the India Semiconductor Research Centre very quickly, and down the road, we'll see one or two fabs coming up rapidly. India's journey toward becoming a semiconductor nation and a trusted player in the global semiconductor ecosystem is inevitable. It's a question of how fast we can roll it out."

Meanwhile, Jaya Jagadish, Country Head of AMD India, stressed on India's unique advantage in the semiconductor industry by stating, "India has a vibrant talent pool that many countries lack." Acknowledging the progress made by Indian government, Jagadish commended, "I think you're doing a great job with that."

Regarding India's initiatives in chip design, the discussion touched upon the Digital India RISC-V initiative. Chandrasekhar explained, "RISC-V for us is a way to leapfrog and get our own proprietary device ecosystem developed around RISC-V. We call it the Digital India RISC-V." 

He detailed the plan to have 18 to 20 Digital India RISC-V (DIR-V) chips tape out and come into silicon for various applications within the next 24 months. The fundamental idea is to deploy these cores across a spectrum of applications, encompassing embedded industrial, automotive, general computing, and high-performance computing. The goal is to witness their progressive evolution and development within the Indian tech realm, Chandrasekhar shared.

Chandrasekhar emphasised the strategic importance of this initiative. He said, "This will always be our family of devices as a way to be resilient, as a way to be protected, as a way to be independent from any technology weaponisation of the future if anybody chooses to do so."

Despite the focus on Digital India RISC-V, Chandrasekhar reassured continued collaboration with other platforms. He said, "We'll continue to invest in x86 AMD family. We'll continue to explore ARM, we'll continue to work with Nvidia and all of the other global platforms. But the DIR-V ISA will always be our homegrown ecosystem for our startups and labs and schools to work around."