Semiconductor India future design vision involves Design India RISC-V and ChipIn

Semiconductor India: Future Design Roadshow was recently organized at IISc, Bangalore, India.

Delivering the inaugural address, PM Narendra Modi said that semiconductors are playing a critical role in the world today in more ways than we can imagine. We have the mission to establish India as a key global partner in the global semiconductor supply chain. We want to work on the principles of hi-tech, hi-quality, and hi-reliability.

India is headed for a robust economic growth. We have the world's fastest startup ecosystem. New unicorns are coming up every two weeks. India's own consumption of semiconductors is expected to cross $80 billion by 2026, and $110 billion by 2030. India has an exceptional design talent pool, which contributes up to 20% of the world's design engineers. Almost all of the top 25 global semiconductor companies have R&D and design centers in our country.

India recently announced a semiconductor program with an outlay of over $10 billion. For any semiconductor ecosystem to flourish, there should be adequate support from the government. We understand that the government must be like the END gate. We will continue to support the industry in the future. A new world order is forming, and we must seize the opportunity. We have shown that India means business. We look forward to practical suggestions from all of you, about how we can move toward becoming a hub for semiconductors for the world.

Future Design vision
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT, and Union MoS for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, said we have seen massive leaps in domestic production of electronic goods and their exports from 2015-16 to 2021-22. They are further expected to continue during 2025-26. India has been the largest recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI) for innovation.

Computing, mobility, and emerging segments, such as automotive, industrial, etc., are going to drive growth in the future. The PM had also said that Design in India is as important as Make in India. You will soon hear about semiconductor fabs coming up in India.

Under the design-linked incentive (DLI) scheme, there is an outlay of Rs. 1,000 crores+ to support all the semiconductor design startups, and Rs. 100+ crores to support designing semiconductor IP cores, chips, and products. India also needs to have a chip design infrastructure.

Semiconductor India Future Design vision has five goals. These are:

• Innovate semiconductor designs for automobile, mobility, and compute.
• Stimulate the next-gen semiconductor design startups.
• Catalyze development of Indian IP cores in semiconductors.
• Catalyze co-development and joint ownership of IPs with active industry participation.
• Availability of incentives for next wave of design startups.

This is an opportunity for startups. About 70% of the growth will be driven by just three segments -- automotive, mobility, and computing. Future device will drive performance and innovation. Fabless suppliers account for 33% of global IC sales. Design adds over 50% value-addition in finished electronics products. Over 60% BoM cost is incurred in design.

Roadmap for RISC-V
India is committed to a roadmap for Design India RISC-V or DIR-V devices, and an ecosystem. India will also be a RISC-V talent hub for the world. India is supporting the RISC-V ISA or open system architecture. India is also supporting and creating devices and systems around RISC-V. The DIR-V / IP roadmap was also displayed (see image).

There is now the opportunity for the Indian startups to work with global majors. Together, they can extend their ability to further innovate beyond the horizon. Qualcomm, Intel, AMD, MediaTek, and NXP are already working with the rapidly-growing Indian startup ecosystem. There is also a fast-growing ecosystem of EMS players in India.

India's higher education and education ecosystem is focused on creating talent pool for the global semiconductor ecosystem. India has the potential to be the skill capital of the world, given the availability of a large pool of young talent. We will have new curriculum in VLSI. The government is also working on creating labs and lab infrastructure.

We are shortly going to create the enabling ecosystem. We are now creating an India Semiconductor Research Center (ISRC) for cutting-edge semiconductor research. We are developing a Semiconductor Laboratory (SCL) for research fab and leading-edge commercial fab. SCL is now being converted into a research fab. We are also looking at future skills for the implementation of VLSI / semiconductor curriculum that will be finalized by the industry and academia expert committee in academic year 2023-24.

Incoming ChipIn
Chandrasekhar added that India is also launching the ChipIn -- a one-stop design center for chip designers across the country. ChipIn includes EDA tools, design flow training, multi-project wafer (MPW) fabrication services, and virtual prototyping hardware lab. Now, you can easily get in touch with ChipIn, and they will work to get you capacity in the fabs.

We will also be launching the India AI program in March 2023. It is an India AI and India DataSets Program to catalyze intelligent compute / AI compute / device system design ecosystem.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MoS, also announced the first Semicon India Future Design DLI startups -- Vervesemi Microelectronics, Fermionic Design, and DV2JS Innovation.

Vervesemi, based in Greater Noida, accumulates two decades of semiconductor design experience in state-of-art data converters for various market segments, producing 50+ IPs on 30 products per year. FermionIC Design, from Bangalore, is a fabless semiconductor company developing IPs and chipsets for wireline and wireless communication systems. DV2JS Innovation is based in New Delhi.