- India
- Jul 05
- Sreesha V.M
PM Modi inaugurates semiconductor facility in Gujarat’s Sanand
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the CG Semi Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) facility in Sanand, Gujarat on July 4.
• CG Power and Industrial Solutions Ltd has set up the semiconductor OSAT unit in Sanand in partnership with Renesas Electronics America Inc and Stars Microelectronics (Thailand) Public Co Ltd, with a total investment of approximately Rs 7,600 crore.
• It has a capacity that will ramp up to 15 million units per day.
• The facility is among India’s very first end-to-end chip packaging units.
• It will offer comprehensive packaging and testing services, including wafer sorting, package design, and failure analysis.
• The facility is designed to meet global demand for advanced memory and storage solutions, catering to critical industries such as automotive, industrial automation, 5G communications, and the Internet of Things.
Importance of semiconductors
• Semiconductor is a foundational industry touching almost every aspect of life, powering everything from fridges to ACs and cars, aircraft to trains.
• Semiconductor chips are the essential building blocks of digital and digitised products. From smartphones and cars, through critical applications and infrastructures for healthcare, energy, communications and industrial automation, chips are central to the modern digital economy.
• Recent global semiconductors shortages forced factory closures in a wide range of sectors from cars to health care devices. In the car sector, for example, production in some European countries decreased by one-third in 2021. This made more evident the extreme global dependency of the semiconductor value chain on a very limited number of actors in a complex geopolitical context.
• By 2030, the global semiconductor industry is expected to grow to $1 trillion.
• The Indian semiconductor market, worth $15 billion in 2020, is estimated to reach $63 billion by 2026.
• India currently imports most of its semiconductors, but the government wants to change that through domestic manufacturing.
Additional Read:
The India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) aims to build a strong semiconductor and display ecosystem, positioning India as a global hub for electronics manufacturing and design, while serving as the nodal agency for the efficient and seamless implementation of semiconductor and display schemes.
(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants.)