MeitY Highlights Semiconductor and Electronics Initiatives at 2nd Semicon India Roadshow
Article By : PIB India
The rapid growth of digitalization, along with India's high-growth digital and innovation economy, has created opportunities in the new world order of semiconductor and electronics.
India is growing rapidly in global electronics value chains. And the rapid growth of digitalization, along with India’s high-growth digital and innovation economy, has created opportunities in the new world order of semiconductor and electronics.
At the 2nd Semicon India FutureDESIGN Roadshow at IISc in Bengaluru, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) and Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, spoke about three trends that are currently visible.
“First, there has been an acceleration in digitalization and governments around the world are digitizing rapidly. Secondly, we are at an inflection point, and third, for the world, New India is becoming a trusted partner in terms of delivering talent, global products, digital products and services,” he said.
The 2nd Semicon India FutureDESIGN Roadshow was launched the with an aim to encourage startups, next-generation innovators, and business leaders to invest in semiconductor sector in India.
Outlining some of the initiatives that the government has taken to support the semiconductor innovation ecosystem in India, Chandrasekhar said that the India Semiconductor Research Center (ISRC), which will be a private, industry-led research center, will soon be launched and the Semiconductor Laboratory is being modernized and pivoted into research fab and will be co-located with the ISRC.
In addition, the government plans to introduce an educational curriculum as part of the Future Skills program.
“It has been developed in collaboration with industry experts and academics. A large number of colleges will have new degrees, new electives, and new certification programs in VLSI. We are actively working with fab companies to create on the job training type of internships for students in the semiconductor space,” he stressed.
The Minister also announced the launch of the ChipIN Centre at C-DAC India, Bangalore, which will act as one stop center to provide semiconductor design tools, fab access, virtual prototyping HW lab access to fabless chip designers of the country. He also said that India AI Datasets program is going to be launched soon. It will be the world’s largest datasets program which will in turn catalyse the Intelligent compute, AI compute, device and the system design ecosystem.
Speaking about the potential for collaboration between Indian startups and global semiconductor players, he stated that they can enhance their ability to innovate beyond the normal innovation horizon through the power of SemiconIndia FutureDESIGN startups.
Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar outlined India’s ambitions with respect to the DIR-V (Digital India RISC-V Microprocessor Program), which will help develop, siliconize and create design wins for future around SHAKTI and VEGA RISC-V Processors and commercial grade Indian Processors this year.
“We are building a comprehensive architecture around RISC-V and aims to make India a RISC-V Talent hub for the world,” he said.
The Minister’s address was followed by an interactive session with members of the audience.
Chandrasekhar announced the first set of startups selected under the Semicon India Future Design DLI scheme. The startups are Vervesemi Microelectronics Pvt. Ltd, Fermionic Design Pvt. Ltd. and DV2JS Innovation Ltd. The CEOs of these startups had interactions with several industry leaders including Dr. Sailesh Chittipeddi, President, GM and Board member Renesas Electronics; and Anand Ramamoorthy, MD, Micron Technology India.
The Scheme aims to offer financial incentives as well as design infrastructure support across various stages of development and deployment of semiconductor design(s) for integrated circuits (ICs), chipsets, system-on-chips (SoCs), systems and IP cores, and semiconductor linked design(s) over a period of five years.