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sremani

Coming to the main topic --

1. Every major design corp has India campus, so India definitely has the talent for design

2. Coming to Fabs -- India lags big time. Why?

I am going to give a half-informed answers -- please fact check and correct me.

a. Dust -- at least the lower peninsula is Dusty (this has to do with Monsoons & Western ghats ..)

b. Water -- It is very hard to find the kind of intensive water facilities that do not go against agriculture sector

c. Silicon -- comes from Quartz and Indian Quartz comes from Andhra and Telangana is not of great quality

I can see India having fabs for domestic consumption and lower end.. not for export or bleeding edge.

note: Please down-vote if you think that is right and also provide feedback where I am wrong -- that would actually help here.

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The quality of quartz-rich minerals used to charge the metallurgical silicon furnaces barely matters for semiconductors. The purity required for the final silicon is much higher than any mineral resource found in nature.

See this presentation "Manufacturing of Silicon Materials for Microelectronics and Solar PV" for an overview of how industry turns quartzite and coal (dirty) into ultra-pure silicon:

https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1497235

If I were to guess, I would say that India's largest obstacle to domestic silicon production and refining is the price of electricity. The processes need a lot of electricity so they tend to be located in areas where it is available at low cost.

> a. Dust -- at least the lower peninsula is Dusty (this has to do with Monsoons & Western ghats ..)

Huh? Your cleanroom standard for semiconductor manufacturing is more stringent than air quality in Switzerland. I think general air quality matter less when you can use sophisticated cleanroom equipments.

Dust and water issues are present in Arizona too. As someone who did their undergrad engineering in India, I suspect the reason is different - India has no materials science talent. Because there are only a few universities teaching the subject, and it's often heavily focused on steel-making as it's metallurgy heavy.

As per my observations, even most of the graduates don't continue in the field, they either go to foreign countries for graduate studies, and almost never come back - or switch careers to IT/Consulting/Finance through an MBA within a decade of graduation.

d. Politics. Large industrial projects in India, especially those with a lot of foreign investment potential get politically co-opted, so it's a very risky move for any large company - you need a lot of political capital to setup a new large fab in India. (which is why this ISM thing is important - it sets up the stage from the center)

e. Bureaucracy. - Incompetent and corrupt with massive colonial hangover.

None of this matter - Between Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Israel & Arizona.

You got desserts, water scarcity, earthquakes, security risks - pick two.

The point is not to produce semiconductor that goes against the likes of TSMC but to decoupe the supply lines for critical application (military, governments) from one source. The same reason they and every other country is building a gps replacement

This sounds like complete speculation?

Not complete speculation - its a view of a by-stander. I have family working in Fabs but do not fully understand things and trying to piece things together.

I know the fact Silicon does not come from Sand but mostly from Quartz. That is not speculation.

I do not know the effects of dust in air with respect to how that will have effects on Fab.

Fabs are water intensive -- that I know and growing up Indian states always used to have water tensions

As disclaimed -- I do not know it fully but I am not completely clueless as you suggest.

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