20 student-designed indigenous chips taped out by SCL Mohali: Ashwini Vaishnaw

Emphasizing India's youth power in the tech industry, Union Minister of Electronics & Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw pointed out that 20 indigenous student-designed semiconductor chips have been successfully produced at the Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL) in Mohali.

Taking to social media, the minister announced, "Bharat's Yuva Shakti, 20 indigenous student-designed chips taped out from SCL Mohali."

As per the Ministry of Electronics & IT, the chips were developed by 17 Indian engineering colleges' students, including a few IITs, and successfully produced at its unit.

These designs are under the Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme, which looks to enhance semiconductor design and manufacturing capacity in India.

The ministry also added that the approved DLI Scheme of Rs 1,000 crore supports homegrown companies, startups, and MSMEs in creating semiconductor products.

The process of designing and marketing semiconductor products has high entry barriers, long development cycles, and fierce international competition.

To overcome these hurdles, the DLI Scheme provides design infrastructure facilities, including Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools and Intellectual Property (IP) cores, for early prototyping.

It also gives financial support of up to 50 per cent of qualifying expenses, capped at Rs 15 crore per application, towards design prototyping, scale-up, and volume production.

There are also incentives of 6 to 4 per cent of net sales turnover for five years, with a cap of Rs 30 crore per application, towards deployment and commercialization of chip solutions.

Since its inception in December 2021, 278 education institutions under the C2S program and 72 startups under the DLI program have been cleared for access to sophisticated EDA tools.

The ministry said "The DLI Scheme is implemented in close consultation with stakeholders and beneficiary companies. Any modifications needed will be done based on evolving requirements and feedback.".

The ministry also mentioned that fiscal assistance has been approved to 23 companies and start-ups for chip designing for uses like surveillance cameras, energy meters, microprocessor IPs, and networking.

Among them, ten companies have raised venture capital funds to ramp up their prototypes for commercialization, while six companies have executed prototype tape-outs at different semiconductor foundries.