India approves first semiconductor fab
The Indian government has rubber stamped a $15.2 billion budget to build three new semiconductor plants, including the country's first 12-inch wafer fab.
The foundry will be a joint project run by domestic conglomerate Tata Group and Taiwan’s Power Chip, and will be established in the Dholera region of Gujarat. It expects to produce 50,000 wafers per month and 3 billion chips a year for customers across a variety of market segments, including high-power computers, electric vehicles, telecom, and power electronics. Construction will start within 100 days, and completion is expected in three to four years.
The second project is a USD 3.2 billion assembly, test and packaging unit in Assam managed by Tata Semiconductor Assembly and Test. It will produce 48 million chips per day.
And the final project is a USD 916 million chip assembly facility to be run by Japan’s Renesas Electronics, Thailand’s Stars Microelectronics and Indian company CG Power and located in Gujarat. It will produce specialised chips for niche sectors such as defence, space, electric vehicles, and high-speed trains. It will have a daily production capacity of 15 million chips.
