Fab-in-India : what does it mean ?
Background
Year 2000 : Dr V.K Aatre, the then head of DRDO was giving a talk at IITMadras. Among many things, one point stood out. "India's future lies in being able to develop hardware at home, especialy device fabrication. Even for Power transistors India is needing to have to depend on imports. My hope is in you, the future generation..... "
Year 2001: One of those days, when I had a friendly chat with my BTech project guide at IITM, Dr K N Bhat. My question was simple. What are the current and future chances of fab in India. He briefed me about how IITM, IGCAR, ITI Bangalore, DRDO and a few other players collaborate to make some basic chips. Looking forward, he was hopeful about the technolgy village (??) that was predicted to come up in Thoothukudi.. By the time you finish your PhD, they would be ready to take the first batch of students .. and in total 15 years, they would complete the three stages of development
For some one who had somewhere at that time that the basic Chokralsky process for Si growth takes a $1 billion machine, it sounded too .. what shall I say.. Wasn't much surprised when 5 years hence, I never saw this come up
Year 2002 or 2003 : The then Central Minister Arun Shourie made a statement that India's future lies in how much we can grow in nanotech and biotech. He subsequently donated his 1 crore Rs MP allotment for the development of a biotech center in one of the IITs
Year 2005 : By now, I had met lots more people who sincerely believed India had a future in nanotech- atleast fab. Here and there I had come to know about small scale ventures, University ventures, on fab... Parallely, I came to know about how many rather advance level testing and analysis is done in India, as long as they get working devices
Every now and then there would be talk of nanotech investment in India but would turn out to be a much more front-end work that basic fab. At the end of the year, there was a $10 billion investment plan annnounced - Intel interestingly, made it rather clear that its $1 billion was not in Fab , but in IT (Oooops) . Sem India, mentioned the word fab, but still did not give details
Beginning of 2006 : CNR Rao, gives a statement somewhere that India can't miss the nanotech revolution
And finally, after all the crossed finger, sem-India comes out - fab it is, and Hyderabad it is
Why now ?
I am still not sure what exactly their plans are -- neither have I read any details, nor plan to anytime soon. I must also admit I have no Industrial experience whatsoever... yet, I feel like writing - by no means a scholarly analysis, but much rather, taking-a-break-from-overnight- work-write-up
What does it mean to India ? What are India's strengths ? weaknesses ? What all will it trigger?
Honestly, I feel that this is something long overdue. I had posted the question "Why not fab in India" to the TI guys who interviewed me for placement from IITM. The answer was simple "When there are established fab and packaging facilities in Singapore and US, why would one want to invest that much ? We just do the design in Banglaore and send it abroad"
That was 5 years before.. so why then now ? I think the answer essentially lies in the fact that the field is no more either-academic-or intel-AMD type giants . There are so many smaller companies, be it in optical fab, or in MEMS related work that has sprouted across US and worldwide. And consider these factors that may have worked in India's favour
1) Outsourcing has successfully proved India as a destination for labour at a reasonable rate (Nope, I would not call it "cheap" labour)
2) Many of the steps in fab and pacakaging - in fact the whole range from the backmost end wafer growth to the frontmost end of packaging and assembly, involves lot of technical knowledge, how to run machines and automation, even pressing buttons. Does not require so many PhDs , and defenitey not in pure electrical engineering . So eventhough the annual output of PhDs even in India's premium institutes is a dismal low, the Bachelors level and even the diploma level techies should fill in most of the gap. And once more they need not be paid the "PhD salaries" (Is there such a thing ?! )
3) The multi disciplinary outlook of Indian engineering- Mechanical, Metallurgical and Chemical engineers (which are a must for any fab facility) are plentiful in India . Needless to say, any software required for such labs - you are right where you should be.
4) Strong theory backing and reasonable experimental setups in premium institutions: With institutions like TIFR and IISc, IITs, this should be easy. As I said, there are already cases where many of these are semi-outsourced from US to India
5) And finally, one has to admit that the fact that sem-India is a consortium of NRI, must have worked as the final nail
I am reminded of what happened in my own lab. Thousands of dollars were spent and some semicondutor industry was asked to deliver SC lasers.. wafers were given, process was given.. everything was given - all they needed to do was to develope masks, do the "dirty work" of fab as per whats written on the paper.. It took them one year, after all the delays and none of the devices worked. I have now done the same processing thrice , and all times it has worked. The last set took me 10 days (well, may be 15) to fabricate.. So, why not outsource such work to India - as long as there is a good cleanroom facility there
So, what do they need ?
Once more, this is in noway an extensive analysis, but some random figures and thoughts.. So, lets start with wafers. I don't think they plan to have Si growth in India, that would finish up most of that $3 billion... and Si wafers aren't that costly anyways .. But I would easily imagine systems like CVD (MO or PE) with which one could have poly-xtal Si or compound Semi conductors. Of course, what without MBE, especially for the III-V compounds, the bete noire(not really) of Si . At IITM, I remember there was system, but it wasn't working and Professors were trying to repair it .. I would assume an MBE machine wud cost something to the effect of a million dollar (maintanence cost wud be pretty high)
And then comes the fab - a good clean room.. thats going to cost a good lot, especially given the poor infrastructure in India. When there isn't even enough drinking water in many places, getting an uniterrupted supply DI water, would cost what normal estimates would.. not to talk about uniterrupted and non-fluctuating power supply
Then comes all the machines in the clean room- photolitho equipments (stepper/contact aligner... ), e-beam evaoprators, CVD systems, RIE, RTAs, ICPs... the list goes on and on.. Not to mention the plethora of chemicals that would be required ... and things like He/ liq Nitrogen..
And the measurement equioments - SEMs, (with ebeam writing facility- each wud cost a million dollar), FIBs may be, AFMs, profilers, various kind of analysers, x-ray diffraction tools... I don't even know how they work in Industries - then comes testing equipments, shiled rooms all kind of scopes, packaging systems (the whole field of CALCE) , even "small things" like wirebonding
Wait, all these are in a research facility.. and that also what I have seen.. Forget about Industry, I dno't even know what it takes in related field, say, organic (polymer) semiconductors, or carbon nanotubes,.....
anyway, let me stop here and move onto something else
And, what can they be doing NOW
To be able to develop India's own systems and chips (marketable) would take a loooooooong time and may be many more such ventures. I would assume a reasonable short term goal could be to be able to work as a support system to existing ventures- as a "small scale industry" in the devices field. Remember my example of laser fabrication. Likewise, MBE growth in itself, if mastered well, produce marketable goods. The 2 inch dia wafer that I work with costs thousands of dollars. And everytime some one need to make a change in the design, it involves PhDs and Research scientists spending frustrating number of days, sometimes just trying to fix a vacuum leak for days... I am sure, there are many more people in India, willing to share that "pain" for a much lesser cost
Hope you get the idea.. not going into anymore details
What will it trigger ?
Just to give some quick examples
1) Clean room grade chemicals could stir a revolution in chem industry in India..
2) Likewise demand for quality pumps, and other mechanical equipments can trigger many other industries
3) New fields (or stronger existing fields) like CALCE in Indian Universities
4) Maintainence of equipments like SEMs can give a lot of work opportunities , not to mention the innumerous other job opportunities , tea-shops, and real estate around (remember 10,000 employees)
5) And needless to say, it can trigger the backward flow of some semiconductor engineers :-)
Challenges
1) Governmental Red tapism, trade unionism,......
2) Infra structure- I would think would be a big challenge
3) Unlike, other manufacturing industries, fab doesn't work on the "operate the crane and assemble the parts and it should work". The yield is much much less, usually (atleast in research and I would assume start up firms). Its very easy to get frustrated and there is no middle product or side product. 120th step failure out of 125 steps is still, most of the times total junk
4) Unlike in US, where almost every major University provides a good support system, there are very few Universities which has basic fab facilities, and that also not state-of-the-art.. Government will have to put some effort into developing those facilities parallely
5) With cut throat competition around the world, and words like nano, and MEMS, penetrating into every field, I think focus (and what they want to do, and more importantly what they DON'T want to do)
In summary, all I can say is, sem-India's venture for now looks like a baby born after so many years of hopes..You will no doubt feel like pampering it, and more importantly, you would want it to grow at twice the rate.. The baby may have been late, but how much ever you try, it would grow only at a rate its supposed to.. don't be in a hurry, and don't give up also just because your colleagues kid is much older.. all the best sem-India
Year 2000 : Dr V.K Aatre, the then head of DRDO was giving a talk at IITMadras. Among many things, one point stood out. "India's future lies in being able to develop hardware at home, especialy device fabrication. Even for Power transistors India is needing to have to depend on imports. My hope is in you, the future generation..... "
Year 2001: One of those days, when I had a friendly chat with my BTech project guide at IITM, Dr K N Bhat. My question was simple. What are the current and future chances of fab in India. He briefed me about how IITM, IGCAR, ITI Bangalore, DRDO and a few other players collaborate to make some basic chips. Looking forward, he was hopeful about the technolgy village (??) that was predicted to come up in Thoothukudi.. By the time you finish your PhD, they would be ready to take the first batch of students .. and in total 15 years, they would complete the three stages of development
For some one who had somewhere at that time that the basic Chokralsky process for Si growth takes a $1 billion machine, it sounded too .. what shall I say.. Wasn't much surprised when 5 years hence, I never saw this come up
Year 2002 or 2003 : The then Central Minister Arun Shourie made a statement that India's future lies in how much we can grow in nanotech and biotech. He subsequently donated his 1 crore Rs MP allotment for the development of a biotech center in one of the IITs
Year 2005 : By now, I had met lots more people who sincerely believed India had a future in nanotech- atleast fab. Here and there I had come to know about small scale ventures, University ventures, on fab... Parallely, I came to know about how many rather advance level testing and analysis is done in India, as long as they get working devices
Every now and then there would be talk of nanotech investment in India but would turn out to be a much more front-end work that basic fab. At the end of the year, there was a $10 billion investment plan annnounced - Intel interestingly, made it rather clear that its $1 billion was not in Fab , but in IT (Oooops) . Sem India, mentioned the word fab, but still did not give details
Beginning of 2006 : CNR Rao, gives a statement somewhere that India can't miss the nanotech revolution
And finally, after all the crossed finger, sem-India comes out - fab it is, and Hyderabad it is
Why now ?
I am still not sure what exactly their plans are -- neither have I read any details, nor plan to anytime soon. I must also admit I have no Industrial experience whatsoever... yet, I feel like writing - by no means a scholarly analysis, but much rather, taking-a-break-from-overnight- work-write-up
What does it mean to India ? What are India's strengths ? weaknesses ? What all will it trigger?
Honestly, I feel that this is something long overdue. I had posted the question "Why not fab in India" to the TI guys who interviewed me for placement from IITM. The answer was simple "When there are established fab and packaging facilities in Singapore and US, why would one want to invest that much ? We just do the design in Banglaore and send it abroad"
That was 5 years before.. so why then now ? I think the answer essentially lies in the fact that the field is no more either-academic-or intel-AMD type giants . There are so many smaller companies, be it in optical fab, or in MEMS related work that has sprouted across US and worldwide. And consider these factors that may have worked in India's favour
1) Outsourcing has successfully proved India as a destination for labour at a reasonable rate (Nope, I would not call it "cheap" labour)
2) Many of the steps in fab and pacakaging - in fact the whole range from the backmost end wafer growth to the frontmost end of packaging and assembly, involves lot of technical knowledge, how to run machines and automation, even pressing buttons. Does not require so many PhDs , and defenitey not in pure electrical engineering . So eventhough the annual output of PhDs even in India's premium institutes is a dismal low, the Bachelors level and even the diploma level techies should fill in most of the gap. And once more they need not be paid the "PhD salaries" (Is there such a thing ?! )
3) The multi disciplinary outlook of Indian engineering- Mechanical, Metallurgical and Chemical engineers (which are a must for any fab facility) are plentiful in India . Needless to say, any software required for such labs - you are right where you should be.
4) Strong theory backing and reasonable experimental setups in premium institutions: With institutions like TIFR and IISc, IITs, this should be easy. As I said, there are already cases where many of these are semi-outsourced from US to India
5) And finally, one has to admit that the fact that sem-India is a consortium of NRI, must have worked as the final nail
I am reminded of what happened in my own lab. Thousands of dollars were spent and some semicondutor industry was asked to deliver SC lasers.. wafers were given, process was given.. everything was given - all they needed to do was to develope masks, do the "dirty work" of fab as per whats written on the paper.. It took them one year, after all the delays and none of the devices worked. I have now done the same processing thrice , and all times it has worked. The last set took me 10 days (well, may be 15) to fabricate.. So, why not outsource such work to India - as long as there is a good cleanroom facility there
So, what do they need ?
Once more, this is in noway an extensive analysis, but some random figures and thoughts.. So, lets start with wafers. I don't think they plan to have Si growth in India, that would finish up most of that $3 billion... and Si wafers aren't that costly anyways .. But I would easily imagine systems like CVD (MO or PE) with which one could have poly-xtal Si or compound Semi conductors. Of course, what without MBE, especially for the III-V compounds, the bete noire(not really) of Si . At IITM, I remember there was system, but it wasn't working and Professors were trying to repair it .. I would assume an MBE machine wud cost something to the effect of a million dollar (maintanence cost wud be pretty high)
And then comes the fab - a good clean room.. thats going to cost a good lot, especially given the poor infrastructure in India. When there isn't even enough drinking water in many places, getting an uniterrupted supply DI water, would cost what normal estimates would.. not to talk about uniterrupted and non-fluctuating power supply
Then comes all the machines in the clean room- photolitho equipments (stepper/contact aligner... ), e-beam evaoprators, CVD systems, RIE, RTAs, ICPs... the list goes on and on.. Not to mention the plethora of chemicals that would be required ... and things like He/ liq Nitrogen..
And the measurement equioments - SEMs, (with ebeam writing facility- each wud cost a million dollar), FIBs may be, AFMs, profilers, various kind of analysers, x-ray diffraction tools... I don't even know how they work in Industries - then comes testing equipments, shiled rooms all kind of scopes, packaging systems (the whole field of CALCE) , even "small things" like wirebonding
Wait, all these are in a research facility.. and that also what I have seen.. Forget about Industry, I dno't even know what it takes in related field, say, organic (polymer) semiconductors, or carbon nanotubes,.....
anyway, let me stop here and move onto something else
And, what can they be doing NOW
To be able to develop India's own systems and chips (marketable) would take a loooooooong time and may be many more such ventures. I would assume a reasonable short term goal could be to be able to work as a support system to existing ventures- as a "small scale industry" in the devices field. Remember my example of laser fabrication. Likewise, MBE growth in itself, if mastered well, produce marketable goods. The 2 inch dia wafer that I work with costs thousands of dollars. And everytime some one need to make a change in the design, it involves PhDs and Research scientists spending frustrating number of days, sometimes just trying to fix a vacuum leak for days... I am sure, there are many more people in India, willing to share that "pain" for a much lesser cost
Hope you get the idea.. not going into anymore details
What will it trigger ?
Just to give some quick examples
1) Clean room grade chemicals could stir a revolution in chem industry in India..
2) Likewise demand for quality pumps, and other mechanical equipments can trigger many other industries
3) New fields (or stronger existing fields) like CALCE in Indian Universities
4) Maintainence of equipments like SEMs can give a lot of work opportunities , not to mention the innumerous other job opportunities , tea-shops, and real estate around (remember 10,000 employees)
5) And needless to say, it can trigger the backward flow of some semiconductor engineers :-)
Challenges
1) Governmental Red tapism, trade unionism,......
2) Infra structure- I would think would be a big challenge
3) Unlike, other manufacturing industries, fab doesn't work on the "operate the crane and assemble the parts and it should work". The yield is much much less, usually (atleast in research and I would assume start up firms). Its very easy to get frustrated and there is no middle product or side product. 120th step failure out of 125 steps is still, most of the times total junk
4) Unlike in US, where almost every major University provides a good support system, there are very few Universities which has basic fab facilities, and that also not state-of-the-art.. Government will have to put some effort into developing those facilities parallely
5) With cut throat competition around the world, and words like nano, and MEMS, penetrating into every field, I think focus (and what they want to do, and more importantly what they DON'T want to do)
In summary, all I can say is, sem-India's venture for now looks like a baby born after so many years of hopes..You will no doubt feel like pampering it, and more importantly, you would want it to grow at twice the rate.. The baby may have been late, but how much ever you try, it would grow only at a rate its supposed to.. don't be in a hurry, and don't give up also just because your colleagues kid is much older.. all the best sem-India
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