Govt aims to setup the Bharat Semiconductor Research Centre in 2024

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Friday announced the setting up of the Bharat Semiconductor Research Centre next year, in collaboration with industry experts and academia. The research facility will be created in public-private partnership (PPP) mode.

The announcement was made after the India Semiconductor R&D Committee—an expert panel of officials, industry experts, and academicians—submitted its report to the Ministry on Friday.

“This institution will be a core institution in India’s growing capabilities in semiconductors. It will be the Indian equivalent of IMEC, Nano Tech, ITRI and the MIT Micro-electronic Labs, which have been the pioneers of every cutting-edge technology in the world,” said Rajeev Chandrashekhar.

IMEC, Nano Tech, MIT and ITRI are notable research organisations in the field of nanoelectronics and semiconductor technology. While IMEC is a Belgium-based non-profit organisation that employs researchers in advanced semiconductor R&D activities, Taiwan-based ITRI is known to have incubated companies such as TSMC, Taiwan Mask Corp and others. MIT and Nano Tech too are actively researching nanoscale science and technology. The government aims to build BSRC on the same lines in India.

Talking further about the report, MoS Rajeev Chandrashekhar said, “For the last three to four months, a group of top minds in semiconductors around the world and country have sat together to design the Bharat Semiconductor Research Centre. It is going to be a global institution in semiconductor research.”

“The design, the way it should be, what kind of areas it should focus on, and R&D, have all been authored, scripted and put together in a high-quality report by this committee of experts,” said the Minister. “We will move rapidly forward to make this report a reality,” he added.

The Minister affirmed that the Bharat Semiconductor Research Centre will become one of the leading semiconductor research institutes in the next four to five years across the world.

The centre is stated to focus on aspects related to advanced silicon, packaging R&D and material sciences apart from the designing of semiconductor devices in India.

“I'm hopeful that in the year 2024, we should have the beginning of this institution taking shape," he told reporters.

Days before this, US tech major IBM also announced its partnership with MeitY in the area of semiconductor research. One of the three MoUs signed between the government and IBM is about establishing a research centre for the semiconductor R&D ecosystem in the country.