Indian Electronics and Semiconductor manufacturing industry

[Advaidhya Tiwari]

yeah, They did mention that. What's your point?

My point is that this is no big leap but ordinary development

 

[sorcerer]

yeah, They did mention that. What's your point?

30 chars it is

 

[proud_indian]

लोकमंच : नई राष्ट्रीय इलेक्ट्रॉनिक्स नीति (21/02/19)

 

[Prashant12]

India’s first indigenous silicon-chip technology


In New Delhi earlier this week, India inaugurated its first ‘Indigenous Semiconductor Chips’ event by a Bengaluru-based semiconductor company for 4G/LTE and 5G NR modems.

The Telecommunications Secretary said that with data security being the primary concern of today’s tech-driven world, India cannot remain secure in terms of data, unless it manufactures its own chips.

After about eight years of research and development, the company released the SCBM34XX and SCRF34XX/45XX series of chips, code-named ‘Agumbe’.

At the event, four chips were unveiled:

SCBM3412: a single chip 4G/LTE modem including the baseband and transceiver sections in a single device.

SCBM3404: a single chip 4X4 LTE baseband modem.

SCRF3402: a 2X2 transceiver for LTE.

SCRF4502: a 2X2 transceiver for 5G NR standards.

This, according to the Telecommunications Secretary, marks India’s entry into “the elite club of the world”. It is expected to have huge implications for India’s data security and data sovereignty, apart from the positive economic implications.

India is a US $100 billion electronics market, but a large part of the semiconductors used in the country are imported, a result of limited local facilities.

The country has two semiconductor fabrication units at present. They are the Society for Integrated Circuit Technology and Applied Research (SITAR) in Bengaluru and a Semiconductor Laboratory in Chandigarh, which is being used only for strategic applications such as defence and space.

Only eight companies and a few countries can design and build semiconductor chips. However, with this new chip series, India could see a “whole new architecture of tower building mainly in the light of emission complaints and growing environmental concerns.”

The RF (radio frequency) sections cover all LTE/5G-NR bands up to 6 Gigahertz (GHz). These chips also support positioning using India’s satellite navigation system, NAVIC. The Agumbe series builds on SCRF1401, which is India’s first RF transceiver chip for high-performance wireless standards like 3G, 4G, and WiFi.

The combined multi-standard system-on-chip (SoC) can serve as a base station chipset for a wide range of form factors, from low-cost indoor small cells to high-performance base stations. These are optimally designed to support evolving network architectures like Open RAN/CRAN with flexible interface configurations.

Through the IPs created for this device, the company now has the potential to design products for several other allied fields and is currently in the process of developing additional chipsets for advanced 5G NR features.

A representative at the event said that, at present, in India, all devices and infrastructure, whether imported or domestically manufactured, use silicon chips. Wireless communication is central to almost all economic, strategic, and domestic activities, the ability to indigenously design and develop silicon chips is vital for the security of the country.

India is expected to import semiconductor chips worth IN ₹187,200 crores (approximately US $26.38 billion) from a IN ₹3,621,600 crore (approximately US $510.25 billion) market worldwide in 2020.

https://www.opengovasia.com/indias-first-indigenous-silicon-chip-technology/

 

[proud_indian]

India Imported $13 Billion Worth of Mobile Phone Components in 2018

FEBRUARY 22, 2019
|IN BLOG
|BY TARUN PATHAK

New Delhi, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Seoul, London, Buenos Aires
February 22nd, 2019
​

The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology’s Phased Manufacturing Programme is running behind schedule. This has meant that the ‘Make in India’ plan for mobile phones has remained limited to assembly operations.

With the ‘Make in India’ plan for mobile phone manufacturing remaining largely about assembling, India had to import $13 billion worth of components in 2018, the latest analysis from Counterpoint Research shows.

According to Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research, “Not many high-value components are being sourced from India. As a result, local value addition in India was at 17% during 2018. This helped the country save US$2.5 billion in forex but increased assembly operations in India led to imports of mobile phone components going up to US$13 billion.”

Counterpoint Research believes that the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology’s Phased Manufacturing Programme (PMP) is running behind schedule as the implementation of customs duties under Phase III, which targets Display Assembly, Touch Panel/Cover Glass Assembly and Vibrator/Motor Ringer have been delayed.

Exhibit 1: Progress of PMP for mobile manufacturing in India

​

According to Pathak, the possibility of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), like Reliance Jio and several Chinese brands, to source chips locally is still nearly four to five years away. “Sourcing of chips locally will happen only once the component ecosystem for low-value components is strengthened and export incentives are brought into force,” he added.

Counterpoint Research finds that Reliance Jio was still catching up on the PMP and imported 40% of Jio Phones in 2018. In fact, Chinese players like Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo had transitioned better from semi-knocked down (SKDs) to completely knocked down units (CKDs). These companies also have plans to scale up their local manufacturing operations, albeit limited to assembling only.

Half of the handsets sold in India in 2018 were imported as SKDs while only 34% were imported as CKDs. However, by the end of 2019, handsets imported as CKDs are forecasted to reach 75% while 25% will be in the form of SKDs.

“We think that the government will first push to localize the components or sub-components under PMP to drive value addition. This can lead a transition from SKDs to CKDs quickly over the next two years,” Pathak added. While there has been a delay in the implementation of the PMP, India has made significant strides in developing its mobile manufacturing ecosystem. Local value addition has risen from a meagre 6% level in 2016 to 17% in 2018 and there are now 120 assembling plants in the country as compared to just two in 2014.

“India competes with China, Vietnam, and Indonesia when it comes to global smartphone manufacturing hubs. While China and Vietnam seem to be way ahead in terms of local value addition, India has surpassed Vietnam to become the second largest mobile phone manufacturer by volume. In doing so, the mobile phone manufacturing ecosystem in India has advanced and made the country a destination of interest for global component suppliers looking to expand their manufacturing,” said Hanish Bhatia, Senior Analyst at Counterpoint Research.

According to Bhatia, India offers a promising proposition for component suppliers, looking to set up a manufacturing base, with its low-cost and educated labor, a strong local market as well as its export potential thanks to the country’s proximity to the SAARC region, the Middle East and Africa.

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/india-imported-13-billion-worth-mobile-phone-components-2018/

 

[Okabe Rintarou]

India Imported $13 Billion Worth of Mobile Phone Components in 2018

FEBRUARY 22, 2019
|IN BLOG
|BY TARUN PATHAK

New Delhi, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Seoul, London, Buenos Aires
February 22nd, 2019
​

The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology’s Phased Manufacturing Programme is running behind schedule. This has meant that the ‘Make in India’ plan for mobile phones has remained limited to assembly operations.

With the ‘Make in India’ plan for mobile phone manufacturing remaining largely about assembling, India had to import $13 billion worth of components in 2018, the latest analysis from Counterpoint Research shows.

According to Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research, “Not many high-value components are being sourced from India. As a result, local value addition in India was at 17% during 2018. This helped the country save US$2.5 billion in forex but increased assembly operations in India led to imports of mobile phone components going up to US$13 billion.”

Counterpoint Research believes that the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology’s Phased Manufacturing Programme (PMP) is running behind schedule as the implementation of customs duties under Phase III, which targets Display Assembly, Touch Panel/Cover Glass Assembly and Vibrator/Motor Ringer have been delayed.

Exhibit 1: Progress of PMP for mobile manufacturing in India

​

According to Pathak, the possibility of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), like Reliance Jio and several Chinese brands, to source chips locally is still nearly four to five years away. “Sourcing of chips locally will happen only once the component ecosystem for low-value components is strengthened and export incentives are brought into force,” he added.

Counterpoint Research finds that Reliance Jio was still catching up on the PMP and imported 40% of Jio Phones in 2018. In fact, Chinese players like Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo had transitioned better from semi-knocked down (SKDs) to completely knocked down units (CKDs). These companies also have plans to scale up their local manufacturing operations, albeit limited to assembling only.

Half of the handsets sold in India in 2018 were imported as SKDs while only 34% were imported as CKDs. However, by the end of 2019, handsets imported as CKDs are forecasted to reach 75% while 25% will be in the form of SKDs.

“We think that the government will first push to localize the components or sub-components under PMP to drive value addition. This can lead a transition from SKDs to CKDs quickly over the next two years,” Pathak added. While there has been a delay in the implementation of the PMP, India has made significant strides in developing its mobile manufacturing ecosystem. Local value addition has risen from a meagre 6% level in 2016 to 17% in 2018 and there are now 120 assembling plants in the country as compared to just two in 2014.

“India competes with China, Vietnam, and Indonesia when it comes to global smartphone manufacturing hubs. While China and Vietnam seem to be way ahead in terms of local value addition, India has surpassed Vietnam to become the second largest mobile phone manufacturer by volume. In doing so, the mobile phone manufacturing ecosystem in India has advanced and made the country a destination of interest for global component suppliers looking to expand their manufacturing,” said Hanish Bhatia, Senior Analyst at Counterpoint Research.

According to Bhatia, India offers a promising proposition for component suppliers, looking to set up a manufacturing base, with its low-cost and educated labor, a strong local market as well as its export potential thanks to the country’s proximity to the SAARC region, the Middle East and Africa.

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/india-imported-13-billion-worth-mobile-phone-components-2018/

Imagine the last 5 years under Congress with RaGa as Prime Minister. We would have been lucky to have even one plant assembling mobiles in India today.

Government policies are creating entire ecosystems in India. And then some people cry about job losses.

 

[Indx TechStyle]

Imagine the last 5 years under Congress with RaGa as Prime Minister. We would have been lucky to have even one plant assembling mobiles in India today.

Government policies are creating entire ecosystems in India. And then some people cry about job losses.

No jobs were lost. Indian government changed the method of calculating unemployment.

 

[Indx TechStyle]

India's cloud market to cross $7 billion by 2022: Nasscom

 

[sorcerer]

High Energy Supercapacitors Developed At IIT Mandi

https://www.thehansindia.com/hans/y...supercapacitors-developed-at-iit-mandi-520208

 

[Prashant12]

Inside India's push to build an indigenous semiconductor design ecosystem

Several local companies and academia-industry incubators have mushroomed across the country, designing and testing chipsets, microprocessors and allied technology that could be used commercially.

India has been taking quiet but tentative steps towards indigenous chip design capability for a few years now despite the many teething problems, as it looks at homegrown chip development as a strategic necessity.

Several attempts were made to build a semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem, including talks with leading chip manufacturers AMD and TSMC to set up a fab in the country, in tune with the thinking globally, wherein countries realized that local chip development helps protect their strategic interests.

China, for example, is building a homegrown chip program, eyeing adoption of local semiconductors in 70% of its products by 2025, up from 16% currently.

India, for its part, is seeking to create a homegrown fabless semiconductor design ecosystem, and is harnessing local talent and helping nurture academic institutions as well as startups.


The idea is to move to a parallel path from relying just on global technology companies such as Intel, AMD and ARM for microprocessors, and Qualcomm, Samsung and MediaTek for mobile telephony.

Over the last two decades, many global semiconductor companies such as ARM, Qualcomm, Intel, Cadence and Texas Instruments have set up design and software development infrastructure here, helping create a critical mass of talent that understands chip development. The government wants to use that talent to help entrepreneurs work on chip design and a fabless semiconductor ecosystem.

Taking advantage, several local companies and academia-industry incubators have mushroomed across the country, designing and testing chipsets, microprocessors and allied technology that could be used commercially.

The research and development effort, driven both by government-funded academic institutions as well as homegrown technology entrepreneurs, is focusing on promoting domestic manufacturing.

Support has also come in the form a new policy unveiled in February, which aims to make the country a hub for electronics manufacturing and gives special incentives for exports and high-tech projects, including semiconductor facilities.

The thrust of the policy, simply put, is on fabless chip design and strategic electronics capability including in the fields of medicine, automotive and power.

Chipping in

The Indian semiconductor component market is expected to be worth $32.35 billion by 2025, growing at a compunded annual growth rate of 10.1% between 2018 and 2025, according to the Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA), an industry body.

Worldwide, semiconductor revenue totaled $476.7 billion in 2018, a 13.4% increase from 2017, according to preliminary results by technology consultancy Gartner, Inc.

IESA has taken a few baby steps, setting up an accelerator for fabless semiconductor startups, and is planning to accelerate 50 such startups in five years.

These startups, says IESA president Rajesh Ram Mishra, would help build a critical mass to jumpstart the next wave of companies. Already, he says, several companies have built small chips that go into set-top boxes and in solutions using Internet of Things.

For instance, Cirel Systems, a Bengaluru-based chip company has designed a small chip that goes into the digital pens used in tablets made by multinationals, Mishra says, adding the company has produced about 4-5 million such chips already.

Earlier this year, Signalchip, a niche semiconductor product company based in Bengaluru, launched a series of chips named ‘Agumbe’ (after a village in the Shivamogga district of Karnataka) that were targeted towards makers of 4G and 5G modems.

Signalchip is making inroads into the 4G/LTE (Long Term Evolution) and 5G-NR (New Radio) product market, and is being funded by Zoho Corporation and its founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu. 4G/LTE and 5G-NR are wireless communication standards that determine the speed of mobile networks.

The chips designed by Signalchip enable high speed connectivity, but are not used within phones to typically receive and convert signals.

It is vital that India develops the ability to indigenously design and develop silicon chips because wireless communications have become integral to the country’s economic and strategic interests, said Himamshu Khasnis, founder and CEO of Signalchip.

“Silicon chip design is a very challenging activity, requiring high-cost R&D, deep knowhow and mastery of multiple complex domains. Hence, this technology is not available in most countries,” he said.

Vembu of Zoho, which mentored Signalchip, agrees. “During the decoding and demodulation of signals, there is a possibility for external agencies to tap into the data. The defence community is more sensitive now; for security reasons the government also wants to know who uses the data,” he said.

The phone chip market, though, is a little more difficult to penetrate since global technology giants are already entrenched and investors are reluctant to fund long-term R&D projects.

Take, for instance, Mymo Wireless. This Bengaluru-based company incubated out from the Indian Institute of Science - Bangalore ten years ago with a vision to transform the Indian microchip industry and emerge as a challenger to US-headquartered Qualcomm.

The company initially gained expertise in chip making, focusing on building IP, licensing its technology and building chips for other companies. It was a strategic decision that helped it earn a steady 30% profit.

However, it soon realised that chip-making was an expensive proposition. When the company tried raising $20 million a year ago, no venture capitalist was willing to invest in the effort. “Indians lack the risk-taking ability to invest this much money for a longer time period. They want to see returns next year,” said co-founder Sondur Madhan Babu. Not long after, it was acquired by a US-based technocrat with a similar vision — building the next Qualcomm.

“I’m sad that we’re no longer an Indian company, but as an entrepreneur I have to think of my business. The vision at least is still the same,” Babu said.

The struggle is quite similar for Saankhya Labs, another successful Bengaluru-based startup that has been creating chipsets for use in defence, satellite communication and broadcast.

The company launched a mobile-ready, next generation system-on-chip, Pruthvi-3, which was designed for use in mobile devices, broadcast, satellite and defence communications.

Saankhya is currently a technology partner to ISRO and is working on a project for the Indian Railways. It has installed chips on 1,000 locomotives to track their locations accurately, up to a maximum time-lag of 30 seconds.

Be that as it may, the chip segment in India hasn’t really taken off due to a lack of venture capital interest and funding for hardware and product firms, said co-founder and CEO, Parag Naik.

For example, the largest semiconductor supplier, Samsung Electronics, increased its lead as the No. 1 vendor in 2018, and the combined revenue of the top 25 semiconductor vendors increased by 16.3% during 2018, accounting for 79.3% of the market, according to Gartner data.

In comparison, the rest of the market saw a milder 3.6% revenue increase, it said.

Professor’s playthings

There are two types of chips essentially — semiconductors that requires huge investments, and smaller ones for products such as energy meters, LED lighting, smartcards and rural broadband.

Academia, which is mostly government-funded, is developing core technology, especially in the micro-processing space, dominated by multinationals such as Intel, AMD and ARM.

Earlier in the year, a team from IIT Bombay unveiled a chip designed completely in-house, AJIT, which is being tested for use in GPS receivers developed for India’s own satellite navigation system, NAVIC.

NAVIC is the operational name for the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System that provides accurate real-time positioning and timing data, and was originally developed for hostile situations wherein access to foreign satellite systems would not have been guaranteed.

Madhav Desai, professor of electrical engineering at IIT-B, who is working on the digital aspects of the project, said the processor design of AJIT has been completed and the SoC based on the processor has received interest from the industry.

“If NAVIC becomes successful, there are a 2-3 companies keen to commercialise it. We are looking at June 2020 as the commercial production timeline. There is enough interest given the indigenous origin of the technology,” he said.

At counterpart IIT Madras, the microprocessor program Shakti is also in full swing.

Shakti, led by Kamakoti Veezhinathan, professor in the department of computer science and engineering, has been designed to reduce dependency on foreign computing resources and reduce the risk of cyber-attacks.

The Shakti microprocessor can be used in mobile computing devices, embedded low power wireless systems like smartphones, surveillance cameras and networking systems. Shakti can also help reduce risks associated with deploying external systems that may be infected with back-doors and hardware Trojans.

Built using open-source architecture, Shakti has seen much interest from companies for strategic applications. The team has also developed an advanced microprocessor for supercomputers called ‘Parashakti’.

In Pune, the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a government-funded research body, is designing India’s 64-bit quad-core microprocessor as well as exascale computing systems that have the capability of one exaflops, or one billion billion calculations per second.

“We’re working towards having a viable architecture for exascale computing ready by 2022. This would bring in a lot of disruptive technology,” Hemant Darbari, director-general, C-DAC told ET in a recent interview.

C-DAC is also working on a range of processors for image processing and smart energy meters, in a bid to develop homegrown solutions for a range of applications.

Despite the evident successes in government-aided chip development, there are several roadblocks, says Anushree Verma, principal analyst at consultancy Gartner.

For one, there are no commercial semiconductor fabrication plants in India as of now.

There are two labs, the Semiconductor Laboratories Ltd, a unit owned by Indian Space Research Organisation in Chandigarh, and SITAR, a unit of DRDO, each of which build silicon chips for defence and space needs.

The Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay has a Centre of Excellence in Nanoelectronics, which has a lab-like facility in collaboration with IISc, Bangalore.

A proposal to get IISc to build a Galium Nitride fabrication facility, submitted by planning body NITI Aayog, has yet to be approved.

“There were two consortia approved in 2014, but they were all held up due to some issues. And, after this, there has been no further development recently,” Verma said.

Yet, despite persistent problems, technology entrepreneurs want to play the long game and are positive about building homegrown chips for communication and defence needs.

“India runs up a huge bill in purchase of these value-added components from abroad. It is important to slowly build up capability in order to help brings jobs in core R&D,” said Vembu of Zoho.

After all, “Intel did not become what it is in a month or a year. This will take time,” Desai of IIT-B pointed out.


https://tech.economictimes.indiatim...enous-semiconductor-design-ecosystem/69153368

 

[cyclops]

Inside India's push to build an indigenous semiconductor design ecosystem

Several local companies and academia-industry incubators have mushroomed across the country, designing and testing chipsets, microprocessors and allied technology that could be used commercially.

India has been taking quiet but tentative steps towards indigenous chip design capability for a few years now despite the many teething problems, as it looks at homegrown chip development as a strategic necessity.

Several attempts were made to build a semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem, including talks with leading chip manufacturers AMD and TSMC to set up a fab in the country, in tune with the thinking globally, wherein countries realized that local chip development helps protect their strategic interests.

China, for example, is building a homegrown chip program, eyeing adoption of local semiconductors in 70% of its products by 2025, up from 16% currently.

India, for its part, is seeking to create a homegrown fabless semiconductor design ecosystem, and is harnessing local talent and helping nurture academic institutions as well as startups.


The idea is to move to a parallel path from relying just on global technology companies such as Intel, AMD and ARM for microprocessors, and Qualcomm, Samsung and MediaTek for mobile telephony.

Over the last two decades, many global semiconductor companies such as ARM, Qualcomm, Intel, Cadence and Texas Instruments have set up design and software development infrastructure here, helping create a critical mass of talent that understands chip development. The government wants to use that talent to help entrepreneurs work on chip design and a fabless semiconductor ecosystem.

Taking advantage, several local companies and academia-industry incubators have mushroomed across the country, designing and testing chipsets, microprocessors and allied technology that could be used commercially.

The research and development effort, driven both by government-funded academic institutions as well as homegrown technology entrepreneurs, is focusing on promoting domestic manufacturing.

Support has also come in the form a new policy unveiled in February, which aims to make the country a hub for electronics manufacturing and gives special incentives for exports and high-tech projects, including semiconductor facilities.

The thrust of the policy, simply put, is on fabless chip design and strategic electronics capability including in the fields of medicine, automotive and power.

Chipping in

The Indian semiconductor component market is expected to be worth $32.35 billion by 2025, growing at a compunded annual growth rate of 10.1% between 2018 and 2025, according to the Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA), an industry body.

Worldwide, semiconductor revenue totaled $476.7 billion in 2018, a 13.4% increase from 2017, according to preliminary results by technology consultancy Gartner, Inc.

IESA has taken a few baby steps, setting up an accelerator for fabless semiconductor startups, and is planning to accelerate 50 such startups in five years.

These startups, says IESA president Rajesh Ram Mishra, would help build a critical mass to jumpstart the next wave of companies. Already, he says, several companies have built small chips that go into set-top boxes and in solutions using Internet of Things.

For instance, Cirel Systems, a Bengaluru-based chip company has designed a small chip that goes into the digital pens used in tablets made by multinationals, Mishra says, adding the company has produced about 4-5 million such chips already.

Earlier this year, Signalchip, a niche semiconductor product company based in Bengaluru, launched a series of chips named ‘Agumbe’ (after a village in the Shivamogga district of Karnataka) that were targeted towards makers of 4G and 5G modems.

Signalchip is making inroads into the 4G/LTE (Long Term Evolution) and 5G-NR (New Radio) product market, and is being funded by Zoho Corporation and its founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu. 4G/LTE and 5G-NR are wireless communication standards that determine the speed of mobile networks.

The chips designed by Signalchip enable high speed connectivity, but are not used within phones to typically receive and convert signals.

It is vital that India develops the ability to indigenously design and develop silicon chips because wireless communications have become integral to the country’s economic and strategic interests, said Himamshu Khasnis, founder and CEO of Signalchip.

“Silicon chip design is a very challenging activity, requiring high-cost R&D, deep knowhow and mastery of multiple complex domains. Hence, this technology is not available in most countries,” he said.

Vembu of Zoho, which mentored Signalchip, agrees. “During the decoding and demodulation of signals, there is a possibility for external agencies to tap into the data. The defence community is more sensitive now; for security reasons the government also wants to know who uses the data,” he said.

The phone chip market, though, is a little more difficult to penetrate since global technology giants are already entrenched and investors are reluctant to fund long-term R&D projects.

Take, for instance, Mymo Wireless. This Bengaluru-based company incubated out from the Indian Institute of Science - Bangalore ten years ago with a vision to transform the Indian microchip industry and emerge as a challenger to US-headquartered Qualcomm.

The company initially gained expertise in chip making, focusing on building IP, licensing its technology and building chips for other companies. It was a strategic decision that helped it earn a steady 30% profit.

However, it soon realised that chip-making was an expensive proposition. When the company tried raising $20 million a year ago, no venture capitalist was willing to invest in the effort. “Indians lack the risk-taking ability to invest this much money for a longer time period. They want to see returns next year,” said co-founder Sondur Madhan Babu. Not long after, it was acquired by a US-based technocrat with a similar vision — building the next Qualcomm.

“I’m sad that we’re no longer an Indian company, but as an entrepreneur I have to think of my business. The vision at least is still the same,” Babu said.

The struggle is quite similar for Saankhya Labs, another successful Bengaluru-based startup that has been creating chipsets for use in defence, satellite communication and broadcast.

The company launched a mobile-ready, next generation system-on-chip, Pruthvi-3, which was designed for use in mobile devices, broadcast, satellite and defence communications.

Saankhya is currently a technology partner to ISRO and is working on a project for the Indian Railways. It has installed chips on 1,000 locomotives to track their locations accurately, up to a maximum time-lag of 30 seconds.

Be that as it may, the chip segment in India hasn’t really taken off due to a lack of venture capital interest and funding for hardware and product firms, said co-founder and CEO, Parag Naik.

For example, the largest semiconductor supplier, Samsung Electronics, increased its lead as the No. 1 vendor in 2018, and the combined revenue of the top 25 semiconductor vendors increased by 16.3% during 2018, accounting for 79.3% of the market, according to Gartner data.

In comparison, the rest of the market saw a milder 3.6% revenue increase, it said.

Professor’s playthings

There are two types of chips essentially — semiconductors that requires huge investments, and smaller ones for products such as energy meters, LED lighting, smartcards and rural broadband.

Academia, which is mostly government-funded, is developing core technology, especially in the micro-processing space, dominated by multinationals such as Intel, AMD and ARM.

Earlier in the year, a team from IIT Bombay unveiled a chip designed completely in-house, AJIT, which is being tested for use in GPS receivers developed for India’s own satellite navigation system, NAVIC.

NAVIC is the operational name for the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System that provides accurate real-time positioning and timing data, and was originally developed for hostile situations wherein access to foreign satellite systems would not have been guaranteed.

Madhav Desai, professor of electrical engineering at IIT-B, who is working on the digital aspects of the project, said the processor design of AJIT has been completed and the SoC based on the processor has received interest from the industry.

“If NAVIC becomes successful, there are a 2-3 companies keen to commercialise it. We are looking at June 2020 as the commercial production timeline. There is enough interest given the indigenous origin of the technology,” he said.

At counterpart IIT Madras, the microprocessor program Shakti is also in full swing.

Shakti, led by Kamakoti Veezhinathan, professor in the department of computer science and engineering, has been designed to reduce dependency on foreign computing resources and reduce the risk of cyber-attacks.

The Shakti microprocessor can be used in mobile computing devices, embedded low power wireless systems like smartphones, surveillance cameras and networking systems. Shakti can also help reduce risks associated with deploying external systems that may be infected with back-doors and hardware Trojans.

Built using open-source architecture, Shakti has seen much interest from companies for strategic applications. The team has also developed an advanced microprocessor for supercomputers called ‘Parashakti’.

In Pune, the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a government-funded research body, is designing India’s 64-bit quad-core microprocessor as well as exascale computing systems that have the capability of one exaflops, or one billion billion calculations per second.

“We’re working towards having a viable architecture for exascale computing ready by 2022. This would bring in a lot of disruptive technology,” Hemant Darbari, director-general, C-DAC told ET in a recent interview.

C-DAC is also working on a range of processors for image processing and smart energy meters, in a bid to develop homegrown solutions for a range of applications.

Despite the evident successes in government-aided chip development, there are several roadblocks, says Anushree Verma, principal analyst at consultancy Gartner.

For one, there are no commercial semiconductor fabrication plants in India as of now.

There are two labs, the Semiconductor Laboratories Ltd, a unit owned by Indian Space Research Organisation in Chandigarh, and SITAR, a unit of DRDO, each of which build silicon chips for defence and space needs.

The Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay has a Centre of Excellence in Nanoelectronics, which has a lab-like facility in collaboration with IISc, Bangalore.

A proposal to get IISc to build a Galium Nitride fabrication facility, submitted by planning body NITI Aayog, has yet to be approved.

“There were two consortia approved in 2014, but they were all held up due to some issues. And, after this, there has been no further development recently,” Verma said.

Yet, despite persistent problems, technology entrepreneurs want to play the long game and are positive about building homegrown chips for communication and defence needs.

“India runs up a huge bill in purchase of these value-added components from abroad. It is important to slowly build up capability in order to help brings jobs in core R&D,” said Vembu of Zoho.

After all, “Intel did not become what it is in a month or a year. This will take time,” Desai of IIT-B pointed out.


https://tech.economictimes.indiatim...enous-semiconductor-design-ecosystem/69153368

We are still stuck in the silicone zone, MeitY is yet to okay the IISc GaN fab & we haven't even thought of a HgCdTe fab at all.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories but some foreign country/ies might just be exercising influence at some public level and in the private sphere as well to stop capital from reaching educational institutions and/or Indian companies that are looking to go into semiconductors.
That, coupled with India having horrible red tape, IPR regulations & the lack of respect for the entrepreneur culture is definitely the cause of this laggard progress in semiconductors.

Something needs to come from the PM level that over rides all this nonsense and just goes all out in the semiconductor sector.
Like for example the Department of Space which under the PM of India has led ISRO to such heights, likewise, a similar department for Semiconductors and Aerospace would curb all of our weak points.

 

[Advaidhya Tiwari]

We are still stuck in the silicone zone, MeitY is yet to okay the IISc GaN fab & we haven't even thought of a HgCdTe fab at all.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories but some foreign country/ies might just be exercising influence at some public level and in the private sphere as well to stop capital from reaching educational institutions and/or Indian companies that are looking to go into semiconductors.
That, coupled with India having horrible red tape, IPR regulations & the lack of respect for the entrepreneur culture is definitely the cause of this laggard progress in semiconductors.

Something needs to come from the PM level that over rides all this nonsense and just goes all out in the semiconductor sector.
Like for example the Department of Space which under the PM of India has led ISRO to such heights, likewise, a similar department for Semiconductors and Aerospace would curb all of our weak points.

You must understand they congress was foreign agent. About not developing now, development takes time. Initially it was thought that private companies will help but it was realised that private companies only want profit. Foreign companies refuse to share Technology with India. So developing technology will need a long time of 10-15 years

 

[Suryavanshi]

Imagine the last 5 years under Congress with RaGa as Prime Minister. We would have been lucky to have even one plant assembling mobiles in India today.

Government policies are creating entire ecosystems in India. And then some people cry about job losses.

Process is Gradual.
U start by manufacturing small components indigenously like Camera, battery, cabinet, earphones, PCB, and chargers.

We have already started manufacturing Chargers.
Back in the day when i used to buy chargers it was all made in China now when I Buy it is always made in India.

Tho we tend to be stagnant in our aprroach once we have made something we set it aside as if there is nothing to improve there. Innovation and manufacturing should be followed by improvements.

Same is true for defence as well, I have heard of no effort to reduce the weight of Akash or Nirbhay missile.

More than industry we need to improve our engineirng college. Student are only concerned about scoring 9 CGPA and a piece of papar that is called degree.

If U look at an average engineer pass out student what skill does he have. Probably basic knowledge about one or two programming language like C or Java.
Very few gun for exotic language like Python, Java, Java Script.
Then u have skills like MATLAB, Adruino, CAD and Machine Learning. Which is only offered by approx 10% of the engineering college.
U need student to focus on projects which have potential to Aid development in industries.
Like for Electrical Branch must have Nano Lab. Network Circuit Anlaysis lab. Machine Lab. System Automation Lab. Electrical Electronics lab, Radar and Electromagnetic lab.

I can expand more if u would like.

 

[lcafanboy]

High Energy Supercapacitors Developed At IIT Mandi

https://www.thehansindia.com/hans/y...supercapacitors-developed-at-iit-mandi-520208

That's for Desi EMALS......:biggrin2:

 

[lcafanboy]

Process is Gradual.
U start by manufacturing small components indigenously like Camera, battery, cabinet, earphones, PCB, and chargers.

We have already started manufacturing Chargers.
Back in the day when i used to buy chargers it was all made in China now when I Buy it is always made in India.

Tho we tend to be stagnant in our aprroach once we have made something we set it aside as if there is nothing to improve there. Innovation and manufacturing should be followed by improvements.

Same is true for defence as well, I have heard of no effort to reduce the weight of Akash or Nirbhay missile.

More than industry we need to improve our engineirng college. Student are only concerned about scoring 9 CGPA and a piece of papar that is called degree.

If U look at an average engineer pass out student what skill does he have. Probably basic knowledge about one or two programming language like C or Java.
Very few gun for exotic language like Python, Java, Java Script.
Then u have skills like MATLAB, Adruino, CAD and Machine Learning. Which is only offered by approx 10% of the engineering college.
U need student to focus on projects which have potential to Aid development in industries.
Like for Electrical Branch must have Nano Lab. Network Circuit Anlaysis lab. Machine Lab. System Automation Lab. Electrical Electronics lab, Radar and Electromagnetic lab.

I can expand more if u would like.

Akash has been improved to Akash NG with canister, lower weight and longer range. LCA to Mk1A to mwf fighter..... It takes time to do r&d. Now the ball is rolling faster than congi dalali govt...

 

[Indx TechStyle]

Nice compilation!
Indian Industry Products
Product Name:

Electrical Power System (Data Patterns)
Details

On Board Computer (Data Patterns)
Details

Power Distribution Module (Data Patterns)
Details

S-Band Transmitter (Data Patterns)
Details

VHF/UHF Transceiver (Data Patterns)

Details

 

[Indx TechStyle]

Strategic necessity: India is seeking to become a chip design hub
China, for example, is building a homegrown chip programme, eyeing adoption of local semiconductors in 70% of its products by 2025, up from 16% currently.

A proposal to get IISc to build a Galium Nitride fabrication facility, submitted by planning body NITI Aayog, has yet to be approved.

India has been taking quiet but tentative steps towards indigenous chip design capability for a few years now despite the many teething problems, as it looks at homegrown chip development as a strategic necessity.

Several attempts were made to build a semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem, including talks with leading chip manufacturers AMD and TSMC to set up a fab in the country, in tune with the thinking globally, wherein countries realized that local chip development helps protect their strategic interests.

China, for example, is building a homegrown chip programme, eyeing adoption of local semiconductors in 70% of its products by 2025, up from 16% currently.

India, for its part, is seeking to create a homegrown fabless semiconductor design ecosystem, and is harnessing local talent and helping nurture academic institutions as well as startups.

The idea is to move to a parallel path from relying just on global technology companies such as Intel, AMD and ARM for microprocessors, and Qualcomm, Samsung and MediaTek for mobile telephony.

Over the last two decades, many global semiconductor companies such as ARM, Qualcomm, Intel, Cadence and Texas Instruments have set up design and software development infrastructure here, helping create a critical mass of talent that understands chip development.

The government wants to use that talent to help entrepreneurs work on chip design and a fabless semiconductor ecosystem.

Taking advantage, several local companies and academia-industry incubators have mushroomed across the country, designing and testing chipsets, microprocessors and allied technology that could be used commercially.

The research and development effort, driven both by government funded academic institutions as well as homegrown technology entrepreneurs, is focusing on promoting domestic manufacturing.

Support has also come in the form a new policy unveiled in February, which aims to make the country a hub for electronics manufacturing and gives special incentives for exports and high-tech projects, including semiconductor facilities.

The thrust of the policy, simply put, is on fabless chip design and strategic electronics capability including in the fields of medicine, automotive and power.

Chipping in

The Indian semiconductor component market is expected to be worth $32.35 billion by 2025, growing at a compunded annual growth rate of 10.1% between 2018 and 2025, according to the Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA), an industry body.

Worldwide, semiconductor revenue totaled $476.7 billion in 2018, a 13.4% increase from 2017, according to preliminary results by technology consultancy Gartner, Inc.

IESA has taken a few baby steps, setting up an accelerator for fabless semiconductor startups, and is planning to accelerate 50 such startups in five years.

These startups, says IESA president Rajesh Ram Mishra, would help build a critical mass to jumpstart the next wave of companies.

Already, he says, several companies have built small chips that go into set-top boxes and in solutions using Internet of Things.

For instance, Cirel Systems, a Bengaluru-based chip company has designed a small chip that goes into the digital pens used in tablets made by multinationals, Mishra says, adding the company has produced about 4-5 million such chips already.

Earlier this year, Signalchip, a niche semiconductor product company based in Bengaluru, launched a series of chips named ‘Agumbe’ (after a village in the Shivamogga district of Karnataka) that were targeted towards makers of 4G and 5G modems.

Signalchip is making inroads into the 4G/LTE (Long Term Evolution) and 5G-NR (New Radio) product market, and is being funded by Zoho Corporation and its founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu. 4G/LTE and 5G-NR are wireless communication standards that determine the speed of mobile networks.

The chips designed by Signalchip enable high speed connectivity, but are not used within phones to typically receive and convert signals.

It is vital that India develops the ability to indigenously design and develop silicon chips because wireless communications have become integral to the country’s economic and strategic interests, said Himamshu Khasnis, founder and CEO of Signalchip.

“Silicon chip design is a very challenging activity, requiring highcost R&D, deep knowhow and mastery of multiple complex domains.

Hence, this technology is not available in most countries,” he said. Vembu of Zoho, which mentored Signalchip, agrees.

“During the decoding and demodulation of signals, there is a possibility for external agencies to tap into the data. The defence community is more sensitive now; for security reasons the government also wants to know who uses the data,” he said.

The phone chip market, though, is a little more difficult to penetrate since global technology giants are already entrenched and investors are reluctant to fund longterm R&D projects.

Take, for instance, Mymo Wireless.

This Bengaluru based company incubated out from the Indian Institute of Science - Bangalore ten years ago with a vision to transform the Indian microchip industry and emerge as a challenger to US headquartered Qualcomm.

The company initially gained expertise in chip making, focusing on building IP, licensing its technology and building chips for other companies. It was a strategic decision that helped it earn a steady 30% profit.

However, it soon realised that chip-making was an expensive proposition. When the company tried raising $20 million a year ago, no venture capitalist was willing to invest in the effort. “Indians lack the risk-taking ability to invest this much money for a longer time period. They want to see returns next year,” said cofounder Sondur Madhan Babu. Not long after, it was acquired by a US-based technocrat with a similar vision — building the next Qualcomm.

“I’m sad that we’re no longer an Indian company, but as an entrepreneur I have to think of my business.

The vision at least is still the same,” Babu said.

The struggle is quite similar for Saankhya Labs, another successful Bengaluru-based startup that has been creating chipsets for use in defence, satellite communication and broadcast.

The company launched a mobileready, next generation system-onchip, Pruthvi-3, which was designed for use in mobile devices, broadcast, satellite and defence communications.

Saankhya is currently a technology partner to ISRO and is working on a project for the Indian Railways. It has installed chips on 1,000 locomotives to track their locations accurately, up to a maximum time-lag of 30 seconds.

Be that as it may, the chip segment in India hasn’t really taken off due to a lack of venture capital interest and funding for hardware and product firms, said cofounder and CEO, Parag Naik.

“This is also not the kind of business that can be built out of college — you need some industry experience and have to earn some grey hair first,” he said. “There is a huge perception battle. We have spent a lot of time fighting the notion that you can’t build a tech business out of India”.

For example, the largest semiconductor supplier, Samsung Electronics, increased its lead as the No. 1 vendor in 2018, and the combined revenue of the top 25 semiconductor vendors increased by 16.3% during 2018, accounting for 79.3% of the market, according to Gartner data.

In comparison, the rest of the market saw a milder 3.6% revenue increase, it said.

Professor’s playthings

There are two types of chips essentially — semiconductors that requires huge investments, and smaller ones for products such as energy meters, LED lighting, smartcards and rural broadband.

Academia, which is mostly government-funded, is developing core technology, especially in the microprocessing space, dominated by multinationals such as Intel, AMD and ARM.

Earlier in the year, a team from IIT Bombay unveiled a chip designed completely in-house, AJIT, which is being tested for use in GPS receivers developed for India’s own satellite navigation system, NAVIC.

NAVIC is the operational name for the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System that provides accurate real-time positioning and timing data, and was originally developed for hostile situations wherein access to foreign satellite systems would not have been guaranteed.

Madhav Desai, professor of electrical engineering at IIT-B, who is working on the digital aspects of the project, said the processor design of AJIT has been completed and the SoC based on the processor has received interest from the industry.

“If NAVIC becomes successful, there are 2-3 companies keen to commercialise it. We are looking at June 2020 as the commercial production timeline. There is enough interest given the indigenous origin of the technology,” he said.

At counterpart IIT Madras, the microprocessor program Shakti is also in full swing. Shakti, led by Kamakoti Veezhinathan, professor in the department of computer science and engineering, has been designed to reduce dependency on foreign computing resources and reduce the risk of cyber-attacks.

The Shakti microprocessor can be used in mobile computing devices, embedded low power wireless systems like smartphones, surveillance cameras and networking systems.

Shakti can also help reduce risks associated with deploying external systems that may be infected with back-doors and hardware Trojans. Built using open-source architecture, Shakti has seen much interest from companies for strategic applications. The team has also developed an advanced microprocessor for supercomputers called ‘Parashakti’.

In Pune, the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a governmentfunded research body, is designing India’s 64-bit quad-core microprocessor as well as exascale computing systems that have the capability of one exaflops, or one billion billion calculations per second.

“We’re working towards having a viable architecture for exascale computing ready by 2022. This would bring in a lot of disruptive technology,” Hemant Darbari, director-general, C-DAC told ET in a recent interview.

C-DAC is also working on a range of processors for image processing and smart energy meters, in a bid to develop homegrown solutions for a range of applications.

Despite the evident successes in government-aided chip development, there are several roadblocks, says Anushree Verma, principal analyst at consultancy Gartner.

For one, there are no commercial semiconductor fabrication plants in India as of now.

There are two labs, the Semiconductor Laboratories Ltd, a unit owned by Indian Space Research Organisation in Chandigarh, and SITAR, a unit of DRDO, each of which build silicon chips for defence and space needs.

The Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay has a Centre of Excellence in Nanoelectronics, which has a lablike facility in collaboration with IISc, Bangalore.

A proposal to get IISc to build a Galium Nitride fabrication facility, submitted by planning body NITI Aayog, has yet to be approved.

“There were two consortia approved in 2014, but they were all held up due to some issues. And, after this, there has been no further development recently,” Verma said.

Yet, despite persistent problems, technology entrepreneurs want to play the long game and are positive about building homegrown chips for communication and defence needs. “India runs up a huge bill in purchase of these value-added components from abroad. It is important to slowly build up capability in order to help brings jobs in core R&D,” said Vembu of Zoho.

After all, “Intel did not become what it is in a month or a year. This will take time,” Desai of IIT-B pointed out.

 

[Advaidhya Tiwari]

Nice compilation!
Indian Industry Products
Product Name:

Electrical Power System (Data Patterns)
Details

On Board Computer (Data Patterns)
Details

Power Distribution Module (Data Patterns)
Details

S-Band Transmitter (Data Patterns)
Details

VHF/UHF Transceiver (Data Patterns)

Details

Some of the modulator chipsets appear to be analog chipsets, not digital. Though I can't be sure as they have not mentioned whether the chip converts the signal to digital before processing. However, the way they described it to be specialised modulator, I believe it to be analog chipset. Do yyou have any idea as to who made these?

 

[Indx TechStyle]

Some of the modulator chipsets appear to be analog chipsets, not digital. Though I can't be sure as they have not mentioned whether the chip converts the signal to digital before processing. However, the way they described it to be specialised modulator, I believe it to be analog chipset. Do yyou have any idea as to who made these?

No, I don't know much more than info enclosed in those PDF files. All I know that it may be C-DAC, SCL Bengluru/Chandigarh or some new start up making analog stuff.

Nevertheless, its still better than nothing.

 

[Advaidhya Tiwari]

No, I don't know much more than info enclosed in those PDF files. All I know that it may be C-DAC, SCL Bengluru/Chandigarh or some new start up making analog stuff.

Nevertheless, its still better than nothing.

Actually, analog is much more complex than digital chips. They are excellent for signal processing and give very fast output. Digital is simply easier to make. Russia, for example uses analog chipset and that is why despite having lower generation fab, Russian radars are better than USA ones