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US chipmaker Micron Technology’s upcoming semiconductor assembly and testing facility in Gujarat could begin production as early as 2024 and eventually make chips in the factory, government officials said, in a major boost to the country’s chipmaking ambitions.
A day after Micron announced its investment in India’s first chip assembly and testing plant, Rajiv Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, told The Indian Express: “In the future, Micron may also start producing memory modules, rather than just its shell.” , in India “. However, this may take longer.
The plant, which will be set up in the Sanand Industrial Park in Gujarat, will focus primarily on packaging chips – it will turn chips into integrated circuit packages for ball-network, memory modules and solid-state drives.
Officials said the Micron plant could be a major boost for India in establishing the country as an alternative destination for chip packaging, an area where another Asian country, Malaysia, plays a key role.
Malaysia has managed to marshal significant investments in its semiconductor ecosystem, including a $7 billion commitment by chip giant Intel in 2021 to build a new semiconductor testing and packaging facility in the country by next year.
Micron, the world’s fifth-largest chip maker, will invest up to $825 million in its factory, which is expected to cost about $2.75 billion – 50 percent of which will come from the hub, and 20 percent from the Gujarat government.
The company specializes in the manufacture of memory and data storage modules, including dynamic random access memory (DRAM), flash memory and USB flash drives.
However, at its Gujarat plant, it will initially start with packaging semiconductor chips — a less complex process than manufacturing memory chips, though still an important part of the chip ecosystem.
Micron, which was recently barred by the Chinese government from participating in national projects due to alleged national security risks, said construction of the new facility in Gujarat is expected to begin in 2023 and the first phase of the project will begin in late 2024. A second phase is expected to begin. The project is in the second half of the decade. Together, the two phases will create up to 5,000 new direct jobs at Micron.
“This is just the beginning because there is more to come as India is rapidly growing as an important and reliable partner for global electronics, semiconductor value and supply chains,” Chandrasekhar said in a statement.
Other majors in semiconductors have also announced commitments in India to boost research and training of professionals in this sector.
Applied Materials said it plans to build a collaborative engineering center in Bengaluru and intends to make a total additional investment of $400 million over four years to construct the new centre.
Lam Research, a leading designer and manufacturer of semiconductor manufacturing products, has proposed a partnership with India to educate and train semiconductor technologists through a ‘semiconductor’ solution.
Chandrasekhar said that under this solution, people can experience working in a chip lab through a virtual simulation.
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