That does not seem right, depending on how you calculate, 100 km to 1000 km seems more realistic. The ratio between 7 nm and 12" is 43.5 million, that makes a 20 mm x 10 mm die 870 km x 435 km. But as we all know 7 nm is just a marketing term, so for a more realistic estimate, you have to pick some feature and scale that up to 12". That will bring you down an order of magnitude or so, but you are not going to end up in the meters range.
I was going for 15nm as a base and have absolutely more than likely got my maths wrong, but if there's one way to get an answer on the internet, it's to post an incorrect one ;)
India is following the Chinese model of starting off in Memory Fabrication and Packaging to build up Fab infrastructure.
There's a similarly sized Packaging plant opening in Assam in Northeast India, and India is working with Tower Semiconductors to restart the SCL Fab in Chandigarh, which back in the 1980s used to sell Intel knockoffs to the Soviet and Indian defense industries before it was burned down during the Khalistan insurgency.
It doesn't hurt that the ministers leading India's semiconductor strategy was part of the team that designed and fabricated the Intel i486 in the 1980s-90s [0] and managed GE Transportation and Siemens Transportation in India [1]
At least India already has a very strong Hardware and Chip Design base, as most companies do Semiconductor Design in India already, and have been since TI opened their office in Bangalore in the early 1980s, and most EDA software is coded in the India offices of Synopsys, Cadence, Ansys, Siemens, etc.
> SCL Fab in Chandigarh, which back in the 1980s used to sell Intel knockoffs to the Soviet and Indian defense industries before it was burned down during the Khalistan insurgency.
Among other things, they also made a BBC Micro clone called the SCL Unicorn, our school had half a dozen of them and they were always in popular demand with us computer nerds.
There is a digital artist who does live show effects for some of the largest bands in the world, he got his start learning 3D programming as a teen on the Unicorns in the BBC's excellent structured BASIC.
On the Fabrication front, domestic fabrication capacity by Chinese firms like SMIC is comparable to Intel in the late 2000s-mid 2010s (aka good enough for most usecases - an Nvidia Maxwell GPU or Intel Sandy Bridge CPU can hypothetically be fabricated using purely Chinese tooling).
The Chinese government did a massive subsidy dump like India is doing today in the late 2000s to try and build this kind of capacity.
Design is not there yet though (but changing rapidly), as EDAs are hard and margins low, so that entire industry got outsourced to India in the 1990s.
> world's most populated country has some capability in sophisticated industries
India does very well in High Precision High Margins sectors such as Pharmaceuticals or purely R&D focused functions like Chip Design or Software Development.
High Precision Low Margins manufacturing was always a shitshow in India due to regulations - you didn't need to deal with headaches like paying of local or state Labor Commissions for breaking labor laws in China in the 1990s or 2000s, as you can work directly with the local CCP apparatus to smooth the way
"The Ascend 910B is widely considered the most competitive non-Nvidia AI chip available in China."
Those chips are produced by SMIC. So they have a competitor not only to Nvidia, but also to TSMC. The biggest break on SMIC growth seems to have been the EUV export emergency break by Pompeo. But it may in the end turn out to be a blessing in disguise for China. The jury is still out on this one.
The villages and areas outside of Chandigarh had active guerilla conflicts in the 1987-1995 time period.
When my parents were growing up in Chandigarh back then, there were soldiers at checkpoints at every block and the law and order situation outside of the city was horrible, and bus massacres were very common, for example at this village in the outskirts of Mohali [0][1] (there are way too many to count so I won't even try on here)
There was no point rebuilding after the fire when guerilla warfare was happening 1-2 miles away.
It was dark times and my parents are definetly messed up from that experience.
I recommend watching the art film "Chauthi Koot" to get a feel of those times [2]
"He was handpicked by Vinod Dham to join Intel and worked there from 1988 to 1991. At Intel he was part of the architectural team that designed the i486 processor."
Tata Electronics is organized the same way as TCS - they want to be a middle manager who isn't directly investing in R&D due to margins.
By maintaining the partnership with a foreign partner, they can get fairly advanced manufacturing IP and knowhow without having to R&D from scratch.
Indian companies don't have the need for 100% IP transfers like China because most have had shared IP partnerships with Western countries for generations (all the way back to the British Raj), nor have private sector Indian entities ever faced sanctions similar to China or Russia/USSR in the 20th century.
This also helps adjacent Tata Motors, as they were severely impacted by the chips shortage and the battery shortage (for their EV division), along with Tata Advanced Systems (the defense contractor) who need commodity chips for a number of it's armament SKUs.
India is on various blacklists of various western govt for military or advanced tech thoroughout cold war and even until recently. Pentium chips were denied even as late as 90s. Sanctions on Indian started to ease after 123 agreement, but India is still on US entity list restriction.
There is difference though, as most major Indian companies hardly invest in R&D and are happy to just keep using licensed IP from west. Indian companies, and general public, have very little risk appetite.
> various blacklists of various western govt for military or advanced tech
Indian private sector corporations were excluded from the sanctions regime.
Until a couple years ago (like 2015 or 2016 I think), all Indian defense manufacturing and R&D was done by PSUs like Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bharat Electronics Limited, Armoured Vehicles Nigam Limited, etc
> Pentium chips were denied even as late as 90s
For Nuclear Non-Proliferation reasons, which was done by the Indian public sector.
India straight up didn't have a private sector MIC until the 2010s.
> India is still on US entity list restriction
It's public sector units, not the private sector players like Tata who have work with companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing for over 20 years.
> Indian companies hardly invest in R&D ... Indian companies, and general public, have very little risk appetite
It's because of the financials. India allows 100% foreign ownership in R&D FDI, so there's no reason for Tata Electronics to try and build a local chip design R&D arm when Nvidia and Intel have massive R&D labs in Bangalore and Hyderabad that have been chugging along since the 2000s and can pay salaries in USD.
There is some incipient work on making indigenous RISC-V architecture chips, but it looks like bullshit to me.
> Indian private sector corporations were excluded from the sanctions regime.
Most blacklists are regarding product codes. No separate carve out for pvt companies. Sure after 123 agreement, most restrictions are being negotiated and lifted slowly and India is not being added to new blacklists. But, that is recent phenomenon.
Can't it be used for things like smart power meters, water supply, or myriad other non-mobile 'smart things' or even that is tall order considering their capabilities?
>Indian companies don't have the need for 100% IP transfers like China because most have had shared IP partnerships with Western countries for generations
Not true at all. Even the indian space agency was sanctioned till few years back.
PSMC is not an investor. They are just there to provide technology/help in setting up Fab. PSMC will get paid for this. PSMC already know all the terms, they didn't even wanted to become investors.
Yep, but the Intel Saigon plant wasn't successful either, and they've been downsizing their VN presence [0]
The exact same problems with precision manufacturing in India exist in Vietnam as well.
"Intel had raised concerns about the stability of power supplies and excessive bureaucracy ... Intel is also expanding its investment in chip packaging in Malaysia, one of Vietnam's main Southeast Asian rivals"
Doesn’t chip fabrication require enormous amounts of water? How’s that going to play out when India is expected to start facing serious water availability issues?
Water Availability is a local issue largely isolated to the Deccan Plateau (Telangana, interior Andhra Pradesh/Rayalseema, interior Karnataka, interior Tamil Nadu, interior Maharashtra, southern Madhya Pradesh) and northern Rajasthan.
Also, fabs tend to reuse water (as there are purity requirements so you'd be stupid from a margins standpoint to not recycle water used in a fab)
Would also note that one of India's greatest geopolitical weaknesses is its blockade potential. You don't want to find yourself limited to unguided munitions a few months into a shooting match.
Most chips that India's MIC uses that aren't domestically fabricated comes from Tower Semiconductors' fabs in Israel, and the India's Eastern Naval Command has near complete control over the Eastern half of the Indian Ocean as there are massive naval and listening posts in Madagascar, Tanzania, Djibouti, Oman, UAE, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerala, etc
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Also, Guided Munitions have been manufactured in India since the 2000s.
Israeli ballistic missile manufacturers like Rafael, IAI, Elbit, etc did a 100% IP ToT to Indian PSUs and private sector defense contractors when the Chinese MIC was sanctioned for Tiananmen in the 90s.
There was a whole corruption scandal over this in India that lead to the collapse of the Vajpayee Administration, and had some blowback in Israeli politics in the 2000s as well.
> India's Eastern Fleet is not equipped to defeat a near-peer blockade
What near peer is going to blockade the Eastern Indian Ocean?
Outside of a couple of relatively minor naval and listening posts, the PLAN doesn't have a significant footprint in the Eastern Indian Ocean.
> A critical input are semiconductors. That said, none of this is novel--which is why onshoring production has been a long-term priority
Agreed, but you don't need leading edge nodes for this use-case, and India has been leveraging Tower Semiconductors fabs in Israel for this use-case for over 20 years at this point.
P.S. How did you use italics? That's actually p cool
> What near peer is going to blockade the Eastern Indian Ocean?
This isn't how one plans for geopolitical risks. Each of the world's limited global and multi-regional blue-water navies (U.S., Russia, China, the U.K. and France) have the unilateral power to shut down India's economy. That's real leverage.
> Outside of a couple of relatively minor naval and listening posts, the PLAN doesn't have a significant footprint in the Eastern Indian Ocean
Agree. But it's clearly developing its capabilities. Not a coincidence that a ring of naval bases are cropping up around India.
People love to assume policymakers spend months and years on Grand Strategy, yet in action most of the hypotheticals that come up just don't make sense. It's not some big game of Civ or Risk.
> blue-water navies
PLAN is not a blue water navy yet and by most standards won't be for the next 7-8 years.
> Not a coincidence that a ring of naval bases are cropping up around India
Agreed, and it's not like India doesn't have similar bases in the Eastern Indian Ocean or in the SCS as well.
> People love to assume policymakers spend months and years on Grand Strategy, yet in action most of the hypotheticals that come up just don't make sense
Whether anyone is acting on or mitigating a risk doesn't change the risk's existance. A good way for a country to lose its sovereignty is to assume its risks won't be capitaised on.
> PLAN is not a blue water navy yet and by most standards won't be for the next 7-8 years
That's proximate.
> it's not like India doesn't have similar bases in the Eastern Indian Ocean or in the SCS as well
Bases are an asset. Not immunity. If someone needs to coerce India, threatening or deploying a blockade (ideally, on energy) remains a capital way to do it.
Barring building and maintaining one of the largest navies in the world, India's only real remedy to the situation is onshoring production and reducing energy import dependence. (Though, as you say, that's no guarantee it will be done.)
The issue is bad maintenance of rural agricultural water infra due to political promises 10 years ago for 100% free water for farmers in Punjab, and negotiating with neighboring Himachal Pradesh and Jammu Kashmir over water rights.
Oh, it is going to be a huge issue in the future. Look at Bangalore. Once farmers too start facing water shortage, the shit will hit the fan.
The Modi government is not known for its long-term thinking - in fact, they are very bad planners as they don't have the requisite experience. Their whole approach to running a government is to treat it like a corporate business - "hey, this thing will make us money and create good PR for us, let's do it!". They have no vision for capacity building. Look at the whole electoral bond scam the Modi government ran and used to enrich themselves - it was legalised corruption worse than the corporate lobbying that exists in America. They even combined it by giving lower ranking IT official (who tend to be more corrupt) extra-ordinary powers of investigation, and draconian powers to the Enforcement Directorate to seize property and used both to extort money from questionable and / or corrupt businesses.
The last 10 years of Modi rule has seen the largest transfer of wealth from the public to the rich, with Modi personally acting as the middle-man and raking money from it too.
I don’t know about their long term thinking when it comes to policy but politically the BJP has meticulously planned and successfully carried out a takeover of the Indian political system in a strategy that spanned atleast 4 decades.
Not really. The political growth of the BJP is all artificial and due to external factors - from the loss of institutional political knowledge that the Congress suffered due to its split and the back to back death of their leaders (Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi) to the capitalist-right who were seeking a pliable alternative to the Congress. And today it is these capitalist-right who are in political control - as they are trying to create a US type military-industrial political system in India. Modi is just their puppet and is a fool who doesn't even realise it.
This is probably a rather misguided simplification of the Indian politics. The BJP plan almost started the tail end of 1980s. Capitalist right do not control the political leaders in India. At least that's not the case with current govt.
I think it doesn’t need a ton of water in general, if you do it right. At least, IIRC, Intel’s big cutting edge fab in Arizona has been justified by pointing out that the water is mostly reusable.
They've been talking about this for the last 20 years - will see when it really happens.
Lack of water, stable electricity and not to say inept Indian bureaucracy and corruption are to blame.
