Is Design in India on the Upswing?

The India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) recently organized a two-day conference on Strategic Electronics, and, not surprisingly, the overriding message  was that India needs indigenous chip design and wafer fabrication facilities for its development of Defense and Space electronics. 

While the debate on whether or not India needs a wafer fab continues on and off, there is no denying that indigenous chip design is on the upswing – and not just in the Defense sector. This is not to be confused with the cutting-edge work happening at captive design centers of multi-national corporations; we are talking about Indian companies designing and launching chips that are 100% designed in India.

For example:

• Bangalore-based Saankhya Labs has developed Pruthvi-3, the world’s first mobile ready, multi-standard next-generation SoC. Designed and developed in India with indigenously-developed intellectual property, it supports applications including rural broadband, disaster management, automobile entertainment, satellite phones, broadband-broadcast convergence and IoT. The SoC can be a game-changer for the telecom and broadcasting industries by enabling convergence of the two.
• Signalchips, also based in Bangalore, announced earlier this year that it has developed semiconductors for 4G/LTE and for 5G New Radio (5G NR) modems, a new air interface being developed for 5G.
• The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System, better known as NavIC (Navigation in Indian Constellation), a Department of Space initiative, is to provide the country with a satellite-based navigation system independent of the US-controlled GPS (Global Positioning System). According to news reports, the Indian Space Research Organization is in talks with Qualcomm (US) and Broadcom (Singapore) for them to make chips that integrate into NavIC. When integrated, these devices will provide position, navigation and timing information that could go into cell phones, vehicles and aircraft.
• The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), part of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), Government of India, is reportedly working on designing exascale computing systems -  that is, computing systems capable of a quintillion (or a billion billion) calculations per second, and plans to have it ready by 2022. C-DAC is also working on developing processors for image processing and smart energy meters as well.
• Again in the Defense space, Indian-owned private companies such as Godrej, Larsen & Toubro, Mahindra & Mahindra and the Tata Group among others, are steadily moving into defense-related equipment manufacturing. Several other large and small industries in the country are also developing their plans to develop and produce defense-related equipment and electronics will have a significant role in such plans.

Are we reading too much from these news items to draw over-optimistic conclusions about a surge in indigenous chip design and manufacturing?

Perhaps. However, the Government’s announcement of a venture fund for indigenous fabless chip design in the National Policy on Electronics (NPE) 2.0 earlier this year might well spur indigenous chip design take deeper root. Only time will tell.