India is a rapidly growing consumer of semiconductors. Its market was $22 billion in 2019 and is expected to nearly triple to $64 billion by 2026, according to Counterpoint Technology Market Research. By 2030 they expect to account for 10% of global consumption.
This past March, India announced a major investment to establish a semiconductor-manufacturing industry. With US $15 billion in investments from companies, state governments, and the central government, India now has plans for several chip-packaging plants and the country’s first modern chip fab as part of a larger effort to grow its electronics industry.
The country’s first fab will be an $11B joint venture between PSMC and Tata Electronics, a branch of the $370B Indian conglomerate. This facility will reportedly be capable of 28-, 40-, 55-, and 110-nanometer chip production, with a capacity of 50,000 wafers per month. Far from the cutting edge, these technology nodes nevertheless are used in the bulk of chipmaking, with 28 nm being the most advanced node using planar CMOS transistors instead of the more advanced FinFET devices.
The fab will make chips for applications such as power management, display drivers, microcontrollers, as well as and high-performance computing logic.
Chip Packaging in India
In addition to the chip fab, the government approved investments in two assembly, test, and packaging facilities.
Tata Electronics will build a $3.25 billion plant in the eastern state of Assam. The company says it will offer a range of packaging technologies including wire bond and flip-chip, as well as system-in-package (SiP). It plans to expand into advanced packaging tech “in the future.” Advanced packaging, such as 3D integration, has emerged as a critical technology as the traditional transistor scaling of Moore’s Law has slowed and become increasingly expensive. Tata plans to start production in 2025.
A joint venture between Japanese microcontroller giant Renesas, Thai chip packaging company Stars Microelectronics, and India’s CG Power and Industrial Solutions will build a $900 million packaging plant in Sanand, Gujarat. The plant will offer wire-bond and flip-chip technologies. CG, which will own 92% of the venture, is a Mumbai-based appliances and industrial motors and electronics firm.
There’s already a chip packaging plant in the works in Sanand from a previous agreement. U.S.-based memory and storage maker Micron agreed last June to build a packaging and test facility there. Micron plans to spend $825 million in two phases on the plant. Gujarat and the Indian federal government is set to cover a further $1.925 billion. Micron expects the first phase to be operational by the end of 2024.
To help turn India into a chip packaging player, the Indian government has turned to Georgia Tech professor emeritus Rao Tummala, a pioneer of some of the chip-packaging technologies that have become critical to modern computers.
Early in his career, Prof. Tummala was a Fellow at IBM Corporation where he was the lead materials scientist pioneering the industry’s first flat panel display in the 1970s and was the technical leader and program manager for the industry’s first R&D in multi-chip-module (MCM) leading to the first 61-layer, low-temperature, co-fired ceramic (LTCC) in 1980s. He was the Director of IBM’s Advanced Packaging Research laboratory responsible for IBM’s Strategy and Programs in the U.S., Europe and Japan before accepting a research center directorship at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1993.
Rao Tummala held the Joseph M. Pettit Chair in Electronics Packaging in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a joint faculty appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech from 1993-2019. He was also the Founding Director of an NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) called the Microsystems Packaging Research Center (PRC).
In 2020, the IEEE Board of Directors approved renaming the IEEE Electronics Packaging Award, an IEEE Technical Field Award (TFA), in honor of a visionary in technology—Professor Rao R. Tummala.
Rao and I first crossed paths in the late 1980s while he was still at IBM and I was looking for applications for BCB resin. We both served as Technical VP and then Presidents of both IMAPS and what is now IEEE EPS (IEEE Electronic Packaging Society)
Through the 1990s and early 2000’s Tummala was prolific in his publication of microelectronic packaging texts as he brought awareness to the field that was often considered an afterthought.
In a recent interview with IEEE Spectrum Magazine Rao was asked about his new efforts in India.
What are you helping the government of India to develop?
Rao Tummala: I’m helping to develop the R&D side of India’s semiconductor efforts. We picked 12 strategic research areas. If you explore research in those areas, you can make almost any electronic system. For each of those 12 areas, there’ll be one primary center of excellence. And that’ll be typically at an IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) campus. Then there’ll be satellite centers attached to those throughout India.
Why did you decide to spend your retirement doing this?
Tummala: It’s my giving back. India gave me the best education possible at the right time. I’ve been going to India and wanting to help for 20 years. But I wasn’t successful until the current government decided they’re going to make manufacturing and semiconductors important for the country.
What advantages does India have in the global semiconductor space?
Tummala: India has the best educational system in the world for the masses. It produces the very best students in science and engineering at the undergrad level and lots of them. India is already a success in design and software. All the major U.S. tech companies have facilities in India. And they go to India for two reasons. It has a lot of people with a lot of knowledge in the design and software areas, and those people are cheaper to employ.
Will India ever have leading-edge chip fabs?
Tummala: Absolutely. Not only will it have leading-edge fabs, but in about 20 years, it will have the most comprehensive system-level approach of any country, including the United States. In about 10 years, the size of the electronics industry in India will probably have grown about 10 times.
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