They are so High-Tech so it's a safe investment.
| Submit your comments on this article |
| India-Pakistan |
| Infineon may join consortium for $4 bn chip fab in India |
| 2007-03-27 |
| Hindustan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (HSMC) is set to announce the technology partners for its $4-billion semiconductor chip fabrication plants. This is the first announcement after the notification of the semiconductor policy on March 22. The announcement of SemIndia’s $3-billion fab unit in Hyderabad, which is being set up in collaboration with Advanced Micro Devices, the world’s second-largest chip-maker, was made before the policy was unveiled. Interestingly, the HSMC fabs will be based on technology from a consortium of European companies that could include at least one of the semiconductor biggies — Infineon and ST Microelectronics. While confirming that the technological co-operation would come through a consortium, Devendra Verma, promoter, HSMC, refused to divulge the names of the partners, owing to a non-disclosure agreement. The names will be made public on Wednesday in the presence of Union IT minister Dayanidhi Maran. Infineon is Europe’s largest and the world’s second-largest manufacturer of semiconductor products for the automotive and communications sectors. The $10-billion ST Micro, too, is a strong player in similar areas, with a leadership position in several segments. It was the number one supplier of camera modules for mobile phones in 2006, apart from semiconductors for set-top boxes and power-management devices. It was also the third-biggest semiconductor supplier in China in 2005. Verma is currently talking to at least five states for setting up the fabs. The location will be finalised in four weeks from the announcement of the tech co-operation, he said. The company will focus on chipsets and other semiconductor products for the domestic electronics industry, mainly mobile phones, direct-to-home TV set-top boxes, automotive and smart cards. --------------------------- India to have three Fabs: Maran he semiconductor policy will come into effect from Thursday, according to the minister for communications and IT, Dayanidhi Maran. The minister said India will have three Fabs and added that 10 semiconductor ecosystems would be coming up in the country. “The Semiconductor policy will be a closed one, and will have a cap on March, 31, 2010, by which we want to establish 3 Fabs and 10 ecosystems, as this government wants to see action on the ground,” he said. A consortium led by SemIndia is constructing a Fab, India’s first, in the outskirts of Hyderabad. The world’s second largest chip maker AMD, along with the government and SemIndia, a newly-formed consortium of NRI entrepreneurs, on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding to invest $3 billion in India’s first chip fabrication plant in the next 2-3 years. AMD will be the technology supplier for the facility and may pick up a stake in SemIndia. Maran said he would write to Craig Barrett, the chairman of the board at Intel Corp., to reopen the negotiations for setting up a Fab in India. The company had earlier cancelled its plans to set up a Fab in India for the want of a Semiconductor policy. Instead it went to Israel. |
| Posted by:John Frum |
| #4 above was from IEEE Spectrum |
| Posted by: John Frum 2007-03-27 22:19 |
| #3 The list of leading companies doing important chip design work in India does not end with Intel, IBM, and the others that announced new investments last fall. Dallas-based Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) was among the first to start semiconductor design work in India, along with ST Microelectronics, based in Geneva, and AMD, headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. It has been designing mission-critical chips on the subcontinent for some years. A notable example was the single-chip phone that TI unveiled last August in Delhi, which it codeveloped with Freescale Semiconductor India Pvt. Ltd., in Noida. Freescale/India came up with the phone's MXC (Mobile Extreme Convergence) architecture. It also contributed to development of the Neptune platform used in Motorola's Razr and Rokr cellphones. A major development was the announcement in November that HCL Technologies, India's top technology services firm, would do design work on IBM's Power Architecture family of semiconductor devices—chips that are customized for diverse hardware products, including Microsoft's Xbox game consoles and high-definition television receivers. Cisco's team in Bangalore claims it already represents the world's largest ongoing developer of custom-designed application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). "We started with ASIC verification in 1999, but today we are designing platforms, which will go in the Cisco products to be rolled out in two years," Johnny Bastian, a senior manager of engineering at Cisco India, told IEEE Spectrum. "We began with 3 million gates [on a chip] and have now gone up to 45 million gates." IBM already has Power Architecture design centers in Bangalore, as well as in China, Germany, Israel, Japan, and Switzerland, but this is the first time that it has outsourced such work. It's expected that an HCL design center in Chennai (Madras) will grow from barely more than a couple of dozen employees at present to as many as 1000 within two years. At the end of November, AMD chief executive Hector de J. Ruiz announced that his company would join a consortium and supply technology to build India's first semiconductor plant, which is expected to cost about US $3 billion. Obtaining foreign investment in the venture, called SemIndia, was a high priority for the government—China already has close to 50 fabs—and relations with Intel soured when its chairman, Craig R. Barrett, dragged his feet. Not to be outdone, however, Intel announced on 5 December that it would invest upward of $1 billion in India over the next five years, more than it has spent in the country in the last decade. Intel already operates its largest chip design center outside the United States in Bangalore, where it employs more than 2500. About $800 million could go for expanded R&D operations in India and $250 million into venture capital projects. Broadcom also has a thriving R&D facility in Bangalore and has announced it eventually will outsource production of chips for mobile phones to SemIndia. Its chief technology officer, Henry Samuele, said on a visit to India on 1 December that the performance of the company's Indian teams had surpassed his expectations. |
| Posted by: John Frum 2007-03-27 22:17 |
| #2 They are so High-Tech so it's a safe investment. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2007-03-27 22:02 |
| #1 According to the policy document, participating companies will have to set up in Special Economic Zones to qualify for special tax incentives and tax holidays. The subsidy will be in the form of tax breaks and interest-free loans. The threshold investment limit for manufacturing products such as storage devices, micro and nano technology products and organic light emitting diodes, as well as assembling such products, has been set at $220 million. If the unit is located outside the zones, the incentive would total 25 percent of the capital subsidy for the first 10 years; countervailing duty on capital goods would be exempted. Announcing the policy—which will extend through 2010—IT minister Dayanidhi Maran said India can expect over $10 billion dollars of foreign direct investment. "A typical fab requires a minimum $3 billion investment. Our country has the ecosystem to take two to three such fabs," he said. Urging the states to come up with investment-friendly policies for such companies, Maran said the center would also support technology clusters, which have proven successful in China. |
| Posted by: John Frum 2007-03-27 20:20 |