
Tata, Powerchip win OK for US$11 billion Indian wafer fab
India has approved a plan for an US$11 billion wafer fab to be built by Indian steel-to-automobiles conglomerate Tata Group and Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor (PSMC), according to reports.
The approval was announced by Indian IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw with construction expected to begin within 100 days at a site in the Dholera region of Gujurat, the reports said.
The wafer fab has planned capacity of 50,000 wafer starts per month and produce chips for a variety of market segments including high-performance computers, electric vehicles, telecom, and power electronics, reports said. PSMC has a broad set of manufacturing processes that over high voltage power, PMICs, CMOS image sensors, logic, and DRAM, NAND flash and NOR flash memory.
It remains to be seen how much subsidy the Indian state is prepared to provide to PSMC. The government spent several years trying to entice semiconductor companies to make plans to manufacture chips in India with a pot of up to US$10 billion in incentives.
It was first revealed that PSMC was in discussions with the Indian government about helping build a wafer fab in January 2023 (see Taiwan foundry in talks over Indian wafer fab). At the time there was speculation that PSMC could be recruited to assist local companies such as Vedanta or Tata who have expressed a desire to enter the chip industry. In January 2024
In January 2024 Natarajan Chandrasekaran, Tata Group chairman said that his company was on the verge of concluding negotiations for a “huge semiconductor fab” in Dholera (see Tata commits to semiconductor factory in Gujurat, India).
It was also announced that the Indian government had approved two chip packaging factories. Tata Semiconductor Assembly and Test Pvt. Ltd. will receive support for a 270 billion rupee (about US$3.25 billion) factory to be set up in eastern state of Assam. At the same time CG Power will partner with Japan’s Renesas and Thailand’s Stars Microelectronics for a 76 billion rupee (about US$910 million) chip packaging plant in Gujarat.
The IT minister said the Indian government had outlined $7 billion in incentives for the three factories and for a chip packaging facility being built by Micron Technology Inc. (see
Micron breaks ground on US$2.75 billion Indian chip packaging fab).
There were no reports on other developments such as a proposal from Tower Semiconductor to build a wafer fab in India (see Tower proposes US$8 billion Indian wafer fab, says report).
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News articles:
Taiwan foundry in talks over Indian wafer fab
Tata commits to semiconductor factory in Gujurat, India
Tower proposes US$8 billion Indian wafer fab, says report
Micron breaks ground on US$2.75 billion Indian chip packaging fab
Tata in talks over $300 million Indian chip packaging factory
