India’s first chip fabrication unit Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL), Mohali, on Tuesday announced its end-to-end support including fabrication, testing, and packaging, to chip design startups in the country.
This means that chip design startups, who are working on 180 nanometer (nm) chip technology in the country for their system on chip (SoC) designs and other products, can utilise SCL’s manufacturing facility for prototyping and limited scale manufacturing.
Currently, fabless startups who develop chip designs have to tap global foundries such as TSMC, GlobalFoundries to get even limited samples of chips before actual production can start. The same not only incurs huge costs but also limits their ability to do failure analysis, testing, and identify any challenges in manufacturing or assembly first hand.
SCL on Tuesday organised a startup meet in Delhi, which was attended by 32 chip design startups including the likes of Mindgrove Technologies, Aheesa, and InCore Semiconductors, among others.
“For SCL to throw it (its space) open to startups to use their facilities and give effect to the kind of research that they are doing, is a significant event,” S Krishnan, secretary, ministry of electronics and IT (MeitY) said in his address at the event.
“The government has announced a policy that SCL is to be modernised, to be made a centre for research and development. SCL’s facility in addition to being used for strategies sectors like space, atomic energy, will also be made available for academics and researchers,” Krishnan said.
According to Krishnan, the hope is that eventually the startups will not have to go out of the country to actually get the tapeout of their chips that are designed in the country.
With regard to chip design-linked incentive (DLI) scheme, Krishnan said the scheme will be opened to a wider section of Indian companies so that more intellectual properties (IPs) can be generated. As of now, 14 startups have been approved for financial support under the Rs 1,000 crore DLI scheme, which is part of Rs 76,000 crore semiconductor incentive scheme.
At SCL, the startups will be offered to generate their product IPs. The organisation has reserved a shuttle space for startups for chip fab and run multi-product wafer projects, thereby providing end-to-end support.
Kamaljeet Singh, director general at SCL said, “we want the startups to utilise our shuttle run programmes. It can be useful for SoCs. We also want R&D both in product as well as process”.
Under the shuttle programme, SCL invites chip design applications from startups and academia and then runs them as multi-project wafer (MPW) projects.
On the 180 nm node, Singh said, “it is a sweet node with 20% market share. The technology is extremely reliable, easily maintainable and has a low cost”. The chip technology is actively used in the automotive sector.
SCL has two fabrication lines — for 6 inch and 8 inch wafers — an ATMP unit, and a compound semiconductor unit. It has been serving strategic sectors like space and satellites, railways, and telecom, among others by supplying them 180 nm chips.
The government is currently looking at an upgradation plan for SCL.
Speaking at the event, Sushil Pal, joint secretary at MeitY said, “we actually need to focus on the chips which are low value, but high volume chips. That’s the only place where we can actually compete with the already established companies”.
The government will soon rollout the request for proposals (RFPs) from companies, who are interested in coming on board as a partner to SCL for its modernisation.
