Ashwini Vaishnaw inaugurates ARM's new office in B'luru, firm to design two-nanometer chips

Bengaluru, Sep 16 (PTI) Union Minister for Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw on Tuesday inaugurated ARM's new office in Bengaluru and said the company will design two-nanometer chips at its new unit.

He said India has made significant progress in the semiconductor sector since 2014 due to a stable and forward-looking policy framework under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership.

"Our prime minister has given us totally a new energy, a new way of thinking for working towards becoming 'Viksit Bharat' by 2047," he said.

Congratulating ARM, the minister said the company will design two-nanometer chips at its new Bengaluru unit.

"ARM is one of the companies which designs chips for practically every use, every mobile phone, for so many servers and products," he noted.

Arm is a British semiconductor company.

Vaishnaw said that under the semiconductor mission, one of the major targets that has been taken up is to develop a very deep talent pipeline and many global design companies are coming to India because the talent is here.

"The semiconductor mission is today supporting 278 universities and institutions where the world's latest EDA tools are available to students and they are designing chips. Twenty-eight of those chips have already been designed," he told reporters here.

Since the launch of the mission in January 2022, India has seen steady growth in its semiconductor ecosystem, he added.

"Today we have 10 units under construction. One has started pilot production and two more will begin soon. Most ecosystem partners, including suppliers of around 500 chemicals and 50 gases used in fabrication, are setting up facilities in India," Vaishnaw said.

He further pointed out that many design-linked incentive companies have secured funding, while the recently launched India DeepTech Fund will support sectors such as AI, semiconductors and biotech.

Under the semiconductor mission version 2.0, the minister said, "We will be focusing seriously on the equipment and the materials which go into manufacturing chips. So we are looking at the complete semiconductor stack designed..." The minister said that the growth in electronics manufacturing is doubling the demand for semiconductor chips.

Highlighting India's achievements in the semiconductor sector, the minister stated that electronics manufacturing has increased six-fold in the last 11 years. It is currently an industry worth of Rs 11.5 lakh crore. Exports have increased eight-fold. Electronics are becoming major export products for India. PTI AMP KH