Mumbai: Acting on global cues as countries are punishing China economically for spreading the Coronavirus by pulling out their production facilities out of China, US Senator Jim Risch (Rep – Idaho) has moved a bipartisan legislation that seeks to bring back production facilities of Semiconductors, critical to national security back to the US. Although India prides itself as being leading global power in terms of software technology, experts in Semiconductor technology reveal that 30 years Semiconductor industry is yet to take off in India.
Senator Jim Risch who is also chairman of Senate Foreign Relations committee has moved the bipartisan legislation on June 23 last month which is now being referred to as the “CHIPS for America Act”. Out of the total production facility in the US, 50 percent of it is in America and about 31 percent of it is based in Asia-Pacific region.
“With the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continued efforts to dominate the rest of the world’s microelectronics industry through theft and coercion, it is critical that we (US) work swiftly to strengthen domestic production of semiconductors and maintain our strategic competitive edge”, remarked Senator Jim Risch in a statement issued on June 26.
A semiconductor has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as metallic copper, and an insulator, such a glass, its resistance falls as its temperature rises. The end use industry for Semiconductors (Chips) is in Mobile devices, Telecommunications, Information Technology and Office Automation (IT&OA), industrial machinery and several other applications. Most known Semiconductor elements found include – Silicon, Germani and Boron.
The global semiconductor industry is dominated by companies from the US, Taiwan, South Korea and European Union. Some of these include – Samsung Electronics (South Korea), Intel, Qualcomm (USA), TSMC (Taiwan), Toshiba, Sony (Japan), NXP (Netherlands/USA).
In terms of Patent holding in semiconductors globally as of 2005, Japan ranked first with 30,500 registered patents, South Korea 13,500, USA 9,500, Taiwan 4,000, China 3,500 and Germany 2,500 patents.
India only figures in Silicon production, in 2014-19 India was ranked 11th out of 14 countries in the world in terms of Silicon production. Here, China leads the production, followed by Russia, Norway, USA and Brazil.
According to Department of Electronics and Information Technology (Deity), India produces about 2,000 Chips per year. India’s demand for Semiconductor goods is expected to grow to US $400 billion by year 2025. By year 2020, Semiconductor design market in India is expected to increase to US $52.6 billion (29.4 percent), from US $14.5 billion in year 2015.
Union Minister for Information and Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad argues that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in electronic manufacturing has reached an all-time high of Rs 1,23,000 crore (US $18.34 billion) in year 2016.
Speaking to thenews21 on conditions of anonymity, an IIT-B graduate in Semiconductors disclosed that many like him migrated to the US as there were hardly any job opportunities in the field 30 years ago in India. “There were hardly few Semiconductor production facilities like the ones at Chandigarh and Nashik. For years we have prided ourselves at being world leaders in software development, which is basically coding and devising software for foreign companies, not for our own sake”, he added.
The Hardware engineer further stated “sadly we have neglected the hardware development side of electronics. It is the laid back attitude in the government and bureaucracy that has not gone as yet. Some Indian companies decided to venture into the field of developing Hardware production base. But since setting up the production infrastructure requires huge funds, most of them who owned prime location lands finally sold them to real estate developers for profits.”
He admitted that the requirements for setting up Hardware production facilities is – huge investment, gallons of pure water, uninterrupted power supply. Bulk of the heavy investment is required into setting up specialized foundries. “What China did was to simply buy out such foundries set up by foreign companies, but as their trait is, all that they have been doing is cheap imitations and copying things. Hope the Atmanirbhar Bharat and Make in India initiatives turn things around for the Semiconductor industry in India”, he added.
