A significant scientific advancement and a new era for India’s chip-making sector have been announced by the agreement with Micron that was reached during Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India during his visit to the United States.
The fact that India has totally missed the bus on the key systems andnbsp, involved in chip-making, is inherent in this jubilation for the Micron offer. And those who are familiar with systems do understand that the Micron offer only applies to the chip package, council, and testing, which is a relatively low end of the technology sector.
It has nothing to do with the fundamental technologies of nbsp, design, construction, and chips, much less the holy blood: the printed machines that are essential to chip fabrication.
India’s refusal to support Russia or join forces with the West and Group of Seven on a” rules-based foreign order” where the Western world sets all the rules had caused US-India relations to sour.
President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Modi both face upcoming votes that could be challenging, so a resurgence of US-India relations is immediately required. For India, it is obtaining systems for crucial industries and announcing” a fresh sun.” For Biden, India is a part of its long-term schedule, de-risking, withdraw, industries, and industry from China.
Even though it is already late, the Modi administration is suddenly starting to realize that engineering is not something you can purchase on the international market if you have money. It is the widely held awareness of nations and businesses.
From the field to unnatural intelligence, from your cheap washing machines to the priciest fighter planes, everything in today’s world is powered by technology.
Everything from inexpensive robots to the priciest aircraft and missiles in the Ukraine conflict is built with a few dollars’ worth of chips. In battle, tanks and artillery are even integrated with missiles and drones to shape the contemporary battle, and radar and spacecraft give those in charge of the wars real-time data.
As they are in almost every industry and device, contemporary electronic chips are the” brains” of all of this equipment.
India must start considering the & nbsp, the future of its electronics industry, if it is to maintain its independence in international affairs. The ability to produce the most recent generation of cards is at the core of the technology sector, nbsp.
And India must begin today because it missed the device manufacturing vehicle when it chose not to restore the SemiConductor Complex, a chip processing plant it had constructed in Mohali, Punjab. A crucial part of India’s reliance on electronics, & nbsp, the plant mysteriously burned down in 1989.
What is the offer with Micron?
One of the nation’s top companies in the semiconductor industry, Micron is a significant supplier of memory cards. It would have the necessary credentials if it chose to establish a ram processing facility in India, as opposed to the Foxconn-Vedanta construction plan, which was met with much fuss despite the fact that FoxConn has no prior experience in chip manufacturing.
However, that is not what Micron is providing. In order to” assemble, package, and test” chips that Micron has fabricated elsewhere, it has offered to set up a plant in Gujarat state.
For device fabrication facilities are located by Micron in the US and China, and their goods will be packaged and put to the test in India. Therefore, if making chips was India’s purpose, it won’t be accomplished through the Micron offer. India is assembling and testing chips that have been produced abroad, which is the lowest level of chip-making systems.
India competes with nations like Malaysia rather than the United States, China, South Korea, and Japan in the production of chips. With about & nbsp, 13 % of the global OSAT( outsourced semiconductor assembly and test ) market, Malaysia is already far ahead in this area.
Finding such facilities in Malaysia and now India will be a part of US companies’ de-risking strategy, where they move the low end of chip production to other nations while promoting the creation of new, high-end chips in Clay, Washington, such as & nbsp, Micron’s$ 100 billion mega-fab & ndrp.
Benefits vs. prices
Let’s examine the financial commitments made in setting up the Micron grow and who is footing the bill.
The core Indian government is expected to contribute a 50 % payment, and the Gujarat state government will contribute an additional 20 %. The total cost of setting up the herb is estimated to become$ 2.75 billion. Just 30 % of the total money is invested by Micron.
In other words, Micron does own a flower worth$ 2.75 billion that it would have only invested$ 825 million in. This is referred to as an” extraordinary degree of subsidy” also by industry publications like eeNews Europe.
In other words, this is a part of the public relations practice to improve Modi’s reputation, which has been damaged by the Bharatiya Janata Party losing the elections in Karnataka and the ongoing unrest in Manipur. India is” subsidizing” a top US manufacturer so that it can get together and check the cards built in Micron’s high-end plants in the United States and China if we look at this package for getting low-level technology – assembly and tests.
India is not the only nation that offers incentives for plant construction and systems. China and the US are also. The government of the United States has$ 52 billion set aside for scrap production and other essential activities. Both the National Fund and the Big Fund ( National Integrated Circuits Industry Development Investment Fund ) in China invest$ 73 billion in the country’s chip-making sector.
However, both of these nations are funding the high end of the electronics tech stack, including cutting-edge chip manufacturing, devices, CAD ( computer-aided design ), lithographic machines, and so on, with only about 5 % of that funding going toward chip assembly and testing.
Even when they do spend, they only spend a small portion of the total cost and spend less money. China has provided$ 1.75 billion in subsidies to 190 Chinese businesses, with China’s top chip manufacturer Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp( SMIC ) receiving roughly 20 % of that amount, according to the South China Morning Post, & nbsp, which was cited by Yahoo Finance.
There is no doubt that India needs to step up its ambitions and start a flake manufacturing industry after missing the chip-making vehicle. It needs a strategy, where and how much money to invest, as well as an investment schedule in order to accomplish this efficiently.
Yes, it needs to go back to the old-fashioned arranging that BJP and RSS propagandists dismiss as” marxism.” And yes, every nation plans its science and technology, including how to create its citizens, which is essential for the advancement of technology.
What is India’s future course, and what does it require? In a market where nations like Malaysia are far ahead of India, paying 70 % of the cost while providing land and low-cost labor ensures that the US company receives 100 % ownership. It is merely a publicity stunt.
This article was created in collaboration with Globetrotter, which provided it to Asia Times, and Newsclick & nbsp.
The founding director of Newsclick is Prabir Purkayastha. in, a system for electronic media. He is a proponent of the free software movements and knowledge.