The Global Market of Chip Industry – An Overview of the Semiconductor Industry

career in semiconductor Industry

Introduction

Semiconductors, i.e., chips, power up a majority of gadgets and appliances, the most common of them being mobile phones, personal computers, IoT devices, etc. The semiconductor is one of the highest innovative elements, which revolutionized human civilization for good. Since this generation is under the reign of technology and automation, the one who develops the best chip will be the beau ideal of that era. Looking far back in the 20th Century’s economy, which was dominated by oil and gas, gives us a prognosis over how data would steer the 21st Century. Even before our nation set its foot into the major production of mobile phones and other electronic gadgets by the production-linked incentives, it was predicted on this basis on statistical data that India’s import bills for electronics would be overpowering its oil import bill.

Thoughts on the Semiconductor Policy

The revolutionary release on 15th December 2021 of the state-of-the-art ‘Semiconductor Policy’ which should have been envisioned about 25 years back, now makes us ponder if it is enough for that retarding time. The Indian Express laid bare the fact that India’s $10 billion commitment was a bit too faint against the rumoured $50billion, $100 billion, $450 billion by the United States, South Korea and China respectively.  IC Insights claimed the expenditure of the chipmakers would be elevated to $152 billion from the $113 billion last year on the new fabs and production equipment, where 30% of a rise is predicted over a year. Further, on, telecommunication market having a constant rapid rise in the utilization of the commercial chips, India would be facing supply chain disruptions.

Computer security can easily annihilate at the hardware level at an elemental stage. At the end of the day, assuming the lower layers in the stack are compromised, there is certainly not a ton you can do at the system or encryption layers. On that account, for sensitive applications such as that of military purposes, it is crucial that India has absolute control over the process and its entire Intellectual property and somewhat over the product spectrum. Chips used in military hardware are undoubtedly highly advanced customised chips, predominantly for the factors that they are tamper proof and radiation hardened making it cost a fortune. Nevertheless, designers now opt for far less expensive and rapidly evolving commercial chips for the same.

Semiconductor Industry in the times of Pandemic

The Pandemic consequently caused the global shortage of chips and supply related products. Thinking ahead, if, in times of future crisis the big boys would be doling out chips and we wouldn’t want our nation to stand at the back of the queue. For instance, if India didn’t have its own Pharma Capital, how would we have fared under the ruling Pharmas such as Pfizers, Modernas and Astra Zenecas? We were certainly blessed for not falling short for the demand for 2 billion Covid vaccines. But what if we didn’t have our own Pharma Capital? Just like some countries who have not been vaccinated, ours would be on the list with them. Putting light on an excerpt from the paper of C. K. Prahalad on ‘The Core Competence of the Corporation’ puts forward a thought that ‘only the companies who focus on long term capabilities will survive and not others.’

India has its own pre-eminence over the Software industry from the past few years. The empowerment by the government for the empowerment of quantum science, ‘The quantum revolution India’ is all set to develop a Quantum Computer of about 50 qubits by the year 2026. Over time, the Indian software industry has progressed from providing low-cost back-office support to spearheading the digital transformation drive in multinational corporations. More than a thousand global firms have built up their own IT or R&D centres in India to take advantage of the thriving Indian software ecosystem. As a consequence, by leveraging its competitive advantages (design smarts and a huge emerging market), India must start pursuing chip- making.

It would obviously be a very favourable decision to set up a shop in India, if India agrees to purchase a bulk amount of chips. However, chip making is a major expertise in India and this expertise will consequently take a fall.

Importance of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI), mRNA, quantum computing, CRISPR-Cas9, blockchains and similar elements are the grounds on which the countries will be ranked in the world in the coming years and India has been dawdling for a long time now.

Britain’s ARM has made a fortune basically by doing that and there’s a 90% probability that most of the phones today have that ARM chip. To stay ahead of everyone ARM has been doing remarkable research and development (R&D) and nevertheless with an open-source RISC-V technology from the University of California there’s a new generation of chips coming up! This might democratise chip design by allowing anyone to contribute value to a basic platform, but that requires R&D as well.

Conclusion

A comprehensive ecosystem must be generated, which requires everything from reliable power to surprising amounts of pure water, as well as assurances about logistics and disruptions caused by labour disputes.  Better late than never, India’s semiconductor policy has the capability to be a game changer. And it will, hopefully!