Qualcomm says India is an important market for chip design as Modi pushes for semiconductor development

A worker inspects a circuit board for a smartphone at Dixon Technologies’ Padgett Electronics Pvt. factory in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021. Dixon has a market capitalization of more than $2.5 billion and has the capacity to produce about 50 million smartphones this year. Photographer: Anindit Mukherjee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Bloomberg

Qualcomm Qualcomm India designs its chips in India because it taps into the country’s pool of talented engineers, the president of Qualcomm India said in an exclusive interview.

“We actually have chips that are completely designed end-to-end in India and we’re shipping those chips all over the world,” Qualcomm India president Savi Soin told CNBC.

The US chip giant designs semiconductor and wireless telecommunications products. Qualcomm is best known for its Snapdragon processor, which powers some of the world’s top Android smartphones.

Like any chip designer, Qualcomm does not manufacture its own chips. Rather, it relies on chip manufacturers e.g. TSMCSamsung Electronics and Global Foundries.

“We now have more engineers in India than anywhere else in the world,” says Soin. “We have a lot of engineers here designing end-to-end chips.”

The chip design process is “extremely complex” as it requires “years of research and development, tens of millions of dollars of investment and thousands of engineers”. In a report by the Semiconductor Industry Association.

Chip design is an integral part of the semiconductor manufacturing process, defining chip architecture and system requirements, as well as how individual circuits are placed on the chip.

Local media reported in January that Qualcomm was expanding its Chennai operations with a new design center focused on wireless technology.

The 1.77 billion rupee ($21.3 million) investment will support Qualcomm’s commitment to the Indian government’s “Make in India” and “Design in India” visions.

“Twenty years ago, we saw India as a hub of R&D excellence and abundant talent. We saw India as a huge market, a huge opportunity,” Soin told CNBC’s Sri Jegarajah.

“We are now negotiating with many semiconductor back-ends as well as the manufacturing industry that India is trying to set up. Our CEO promised two years ago that if India sets up semiconductor manufacturing, we will actually help scale up production,” Soin said.

India’s semiconductor ambitions have taken a giant leap forward with the approval of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government Investment in three semiconductor factories in Gujarat and Assam exceeds $15 billion.

A government statement on February 29 said: “India already has deep capabilities in chip design. Through these units, our country will develop chip manufacturing capabilities. Advanced packaging technology will be developed indigenously in India.”

India wants to become a major chip hub as it aims to compete with the US, Taiwan and South Korea and has been luring foreign chipmakers to set up operations in China. Countries like India will benefit as global chipmakers look to diversify their businesses amid geopolitical uncertainty.

India has announced billions of dollars worth of manufacturing-linked incentives to boost domestic manufacturing capacity and exports to “attract investment” in key sectors and cutting-edge technologies and make India “an integral part of the global value chain”.

India’s Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, Railways and Communications Ashwini Vaishnab said that India aims to become one of the top five semiconductor manufacturers in the world within the next five years. told CNBC in March.

“What we’re seeing is – for example, the benefits of PLI – it’s really bringing more smartphone manufacturing to India,” Soin said.

“So we see good incentives for IT, telecom and telecom equipment being manufactured here. We’re seeing some discussion around design elements. So we’re hoping to see many more included in products that use our technology. Some elements that can be recognized as “Indian design”, says Soin.

apple It is one company that has diversified some of its manufacturing operations to India amid geopolitical tensions between China and the US. According to an Indian firm, Apple currently assembles about 14% of iPhones in India, double the amount produced in India last year. Bloomberg reported.

Google plans to start manufacturing Pixel smartphones in India in the second quarter, Nikkei Asia reported in February.