With no seasoned players chipping in for semiconductor manufacturing, Tower's proposal emerges as India's best bet – Business Today
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US-based chip maker Intel has shown interest in setting up a semiconductor plant in India multiple times in the past. Way back in 1969, Robert Noyce, the co-founder of Intel, visited India to explore such an opportunity. And once again in 2005–06, when the company had planned to set up a multi-billion dollar investment in India. In both cases, the Indian government didn’t leverage those opportunities. Today, other than contributing to the design side, India does not have any presence in the global semiconductor ecosystem.
Now that India is seriously pursuing semiconductor manufacturing by offering industry-best incentives of about 70% of the project cost (between centre and state), Intel has not exhibited any inclination towards establishing a testing and packing plant, let alone a chip manufacturing facility. And it’s not just Intel. Whether it’s integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) such as Intel, Samsung, or Micron, or pure-play foundries like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, GlobalFoundries, or United Microelectronics Corp., none of the prominent or lesser-known players have shown interest in the Government of India’s semiconductor scheme.
While most industry players are reluctant to scratch everything from scratch in India, Isreal-based Tower Semiconductors has for a while been considering India as a prime location for establishing a fabrication plant.
“Tower Semiconductor has shown interest in setting up a factory in India. Other than that, Tata Electronics has managed to get Taiwan’s PSMC as a technology partner. Other than these two, I haven’t heard of any third global fab player showing interest in India’s Semiconductor Mission. There are some 6-7 proposals sitting for approval, and I suspect that many of them don’t have a technology partner for them to be approved. The government has signed an agreement with the Belgium-based research and innovation hub, the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC), for accessing technology to manufacture 28nm and above, but it is not considered a technology partner for production-level fab.”
Having applied in 2022 and then revised the proposal again in 2023, Tower Semiconductor has been waiting for approval from the India Semiconductor Mission and the Ministry of Electronics and IT. Reports have been indicating the ministry’s apprehension about Tower Semiconductors 65nm technology, as globally, the increasingly edge nodes are 3n, 5nm, and 7nm. However, industry experts say that 65nm isn’t bad to start with for India.
The 65nm fab that Tower Semiconductor has proposed will fabricate analog chips that are used in a wide variety of applications, including analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, RF transceiver circuits including low noise amplifiers (LNAs), and filters that go in all electronics such as modems, smartphone, electric vehicles, WiFi routers, and more.
“Tower Semiconductors specialises in analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products and chips. Analog chips typically don’t have millions of transistors, unlike digital chips, which can provide a lot of capabilities in older nodes such as 90nm or 65nm. Today, analog and mixed signal chips for applications such as automobiles, defence/aerospace, medical electronics, sensors, power management, high-voltage, high-speed analog applications, etc. can be efficiently designed and manufactured in general purpose and specialty processes such as 65 nm or other legacy nodes,” says Satya Gupta, President, VLSI Society. He adds that, if you look at the scale, 65nm will be about 7% of the overall foundry market of $100 billions in 2025. Foundry markets exclude memory and IDMs like Intel or the product companies that have their own fab. And the foundry market is about 18–20% of the overall semiconductor market.
“It will be a big win for India if Tower Semiconductor decides to pursue 65nm technology in India, as there are some radical differences between legacy 90nm and 65nm technology, one of which is DUV lithography. 65nm manufacturing requires both 193nm and 248nm DUV lithography tools, which will enable the India Fab site for faster and cheaper migration to the next advanced technology in the future as the end market demands shift,” says Danish Faruqui, CEO of Fab Economics. He adds, “Based on demand forecasts, 65 nm is a high-demand pareto node for India end markets across 65nm various derivatives technologies on silicon and other specialty substrates like silicon on insulation.”
Tower Semiconductor is among the top 10 foundry players globally, and in 2022, Intel was attempting to acquire the company in a $5.4 billion deal that didn’t go through.
Hopefully, once the new government is back in office, Meity will be quick to seek Cabinet’s approval for raising the current incentive ceiling of Rs 76,000 crore for domestic semiconductor manufacturing and evaluate and approve the future of Tower Semiconductor’s $11 billion (Rs 91,000 crore) fabrication project.
Experts say Tower Semiconductor will need to have an investment partner for its $8 billion proposal, for which the company has already identified one, according to sources close to the company.
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