Tata, Cyient and Applied Materials win ₹4,500 crore mandate to modernise India’s lone chip fab
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. NEW DELHI: Two homegrown firms, including a Tata Group company, along with a US chip design major, have bagged a ₹4,500 crore project to enable India’s sole semiconductor fabrication plant, Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL) in Mohali, to make more modern industrial chips used in critical sectors like power and energy. On Thursday, Tata Semiconductor Manufacturing Pvt.
Ltd, Cyient Semiconductors Pvt. Ltd, and Applied Materials’ Singapore subsidiary were declared winners of three separate parts of the modernization project. The effort will be spearheaded by the Ministry of Electronics and IT and funded through the first tranche of the India Semiconductor Mission.
Mint has reviewed a copy of the approved tender. Tata Semiconductor won the first bid package, which involves augmenting SCL Mohali’s outdated 8-inch complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) wafer fab. The size of a semiconductor wafer determines how efficiently a fab can make chips.
To be sure, modern fabs now use 12-inch wafers at more sophisticated chip “nodes" to maximize manufacturing efficiency. Cyient Semiconductors won the second bid package, which entails supplying patented technologies to make radio-frequency integrated circuits, as well as chips that support imaging and power-management devices. Modernization of SCL Mohali’s fabrication equipment, including the software for new machines, was awarded to Applied Materials.
The project now awaits formal approval from the Union cabinet before work begins. Overall, SCL Mohali’s modernization efforts are expected to start “in a matter of weeks," a senior official with direct knowledge of the matter told Mint. SCL currently makes only 180-nanometre (nm) chips, which are
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