NEW DELHI: Almost three-and-a-half years after govt embarked on a plan to kick-start semiconductor manufacturing and supplier ecosystem in India, the country got its first commercially-made chip, which was presented to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Tuesday at Semicon India.The QFP (quad flat package) chip will be used across industries such as consumer electronics (on products like refrigerators, washing machines and air conditioners) and automobiles (for steering control, side-view mirror, engine control unit etc). The chip has been packaged at factory of CG Semi – a JV between CG Power & Industrial and Japanese Renesas & Thailand’s Stars Micro – at Sanand in Gujarat. CG Semi’s project has a cumulative investment of Rs 7,600 crore and its facility is India’s first end-to-end semiconductor OSAT (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test) facility. It is one of the key projects under govt’s Rs 76,000 crore India Semiconductor Mission. Vaishnaw said the development marks a major milestone for India’s semiconductor ambitions, and added that work on other chip projects has been progressing at a healthy pace, including the Micron memory fab testing and packaging facility in Gujarat.Sivakumar S Nadarajan, senior GM for assembly at CG Semi, said the QFP package is a microcontroller which controls automation across devices. “For example, when you put clothes in a washing machine, the microcontroller decides the next actions based on the weight of the clothes. It will send signals and decide how long do the clothes need to be washed, how long should be the spinning, and when to use water and when to stop it. This chip will be controlling these crucial functions automatically.”Nadarajan said there are two factories in Sanand for the chips. “The first G1 facility which was inaugurated in late Aug has a capacity of producing 0.5 million units per day. The new bigger G2 facility will have a capacity of 14 million units per day.”The chips are made after the semiconductor wafers are shipped in by Renesas. “We package it as per the requirements of our customers and then send them back. They can be used in India, or even be exported to other countries.”
