Semiconductors require a confluence of several specialised disciplines — different engineering streams, device physics, chemistry, and materials sciences. The inherent complexity of designing, manufacturing, and scaling semiconductor products necessitates careful (nuanced and precise) orchestration of these diverse disciplines. The application domains in which semiconductor products are deployed (such as robotics, automotive, personal computing, mobile, telco, data centres, embedded systems, internet of things, home automation) present distinct requirements and nuances that influence how they must be designed and manufactured. The multiplicity of specialised fields and application domains, and the competencies they require creates the need for a dedicated environment for semiconductor study, research and development.
Semiconductor products involve specialised engineering skills (electrical, mechanical, thermal, and computer) for architecture, design, verification and validation to design general purpose and specialised processors, accelerators and custom silicon. Similarly, manufacturing uses complex processes with several hundred precise steps. It starts with silicon extraction from sand, wafer preparation, lithography to print extremely small patterns that represent circuit design and transistors, etching to remove unwanted material, ion implantation to control the flow of electricity, metal layer addition to connect billions of transistors, die preparation and package design to bring out signals for board design. Each step requires simulation accuracy, modelling precision and testing rigour to eliminate costly downstream errors.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision for semiconductors is to transform India from a major chip consumer into a global semiconductor powerhouse that ensures the country’s technological and strategic autonomy. Integrating semiconductor self-reliance is a foundation for a ‘Viksit Bharat’ by 2047. India’s ambition to achieve self-sufficiency and leadership in semiconductor design necessitates a focused, in-depth, and well-rounded approach. The India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) aims to establish a robust semiconductor and display ecosystem to make India a global hub for electronics supporting domestic chip design along with manufacturing and fabrication facilities, creating a secure supply chain.
Big dreams demand bigger moves. Current education systems teach engineering and science as generalised streams that can be applied to any domain — there are about 9,000 universities and some 1.5 million graduating engineers. While this generalist approach brings flexibility, it does not create expertise required to achieve leadership in a complex, nuanced and multi-disciplinary field like semiconductors.
To achieve the Prime Minister’s vision and accelerate India’s semiconductor mission, India must establish a semiconductor university to fuel innovation, accelerate design, and scale production — one university, a pioneering initiative that creates a pipeline of experts to build the digital diamonds for the Indian economy.
This semiconductor university will offer foundational education and futuristic research opportunities across semiconductor-related streams. It would enable students to progress from a bachelor's degree to specialised master’s programmes, culminating in PhD research, all contextualised for semiconductors. Such an environment will attract the top academic talent to return to India for the same reason they left and bring leadership in fundamental research. India provides the data scale, physical constraints and economic benefits that are critical for research and breakthrough innovations. This model fosters an integrated ecosystem of specialised semiconductor disciplines working in harmony – akin to an orchestra of different instruments rendering notes to the same song.
For this to succeed, collaboration and commitment across university, industry and government are essential. Commitment to this vision is critical for students to enroll in the semiconductor university versus learning in a generalised institution. The latter gives students the flexibility to move into any domain, while the former contextualises their education for semiconductors and its application domain.
The university should offer comprehensive programmes focused on the foundational knowledge necessary for the semiconductor industry, complemented by hands-on projects in partnership with industry and supported by laboratories, manufacturing and fabrication infrastructure along with state-of-the-art electronic design automation (EDA) and manufacturing tools. Thanks to the efforts of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and ISM, India is already offering EDA tools and training some 65,000 engineers on chip design, across 300-plus universities. It is this commitment and investment from the Indian government that can bring to the world a first-of-its-kind university.
An integral part of the education is the study of application domains where semiconductors play a critical role. These application domains include areas such as consumer electronics (phones, computers, automotive), commercial (industrial and medical robotics, data centres, hyperscalers, enterprise), public infrastructure (energy, surveillance, sensors), and mission critical verticals (space, defence).
Once established, the semiconductor university will bring affordable compute for population-scale needs; develop breakthrough innovations to mitigate challenges in memory, interconnect between chiplets, chips and racks, energy consumption and cooling overhead that plague AI deployment; leapfrog (from lab to market) in silicon photonics, quantum and neuromorphic computing research; and deliver products for relevant applications and manufacture cost-efficient, high-yield chips that can serve diverse application domains.
The semiconductor university is a generational bet that will accelerate the nation to achieve the ‘Viksit Bharat’ vision. It will be a critical national infrastructure that will offer India technological sovereignty.
The author is a technology leader with 25-plus years of experience in the semiconductor industry. Views are personal
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