India's fab dreams running aground
Crunch
Slowdown prevents India from becoming Taiwan
Thursday, 19 February 2009, 16:24
THE SLOWING ECONOMY is causing Indian to put plans to become a world centre of semiconductor manufacturing on hold.
One by one, outfits, such as AMD, which say they are going to set up fabs in India, have pulled out of the projects and investment plans like that of Mukesh Ambani's foray into the capital-intensive semiconductor business are now on the back burner.
According to projects lodged with the government, everyone plus dog wants to set up a solar plant but no one can be bothered stumping up the $3-4 billion needed to build a fab. µ
L'Inq
Business Standard
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First, let's distinguish between wafers for ICs (integrated circuits, chips), and wafers for the solar energy industry. These are two totally different markets.
India runs a huge program to develop its own FPGA-based industry. You need skilled people for that, not fabs. The purpose of the whole Indian mission to the moon is to support the fabless semiconductor industry. Converting ideas into circuit diagrams (or HDL code) is highly profitable, while converting sand into chips (fabs) means little return for large investments.
Maybe you are only describing a failure of US companies in India. They see the country as resource of cheap labour. Perhaps the Indian government sees the future a little bit differently and therefore lets all proposals end up in the sand, until the own industry is ready to build Indian plants. That would actually make sense for India.
The solar energy industry is changing so rapidly that it makes no sense for India to engage into huge enterprises with US companies. As the cited article points out, by the time the plant is ready to produce chips, the underlying technology may be already obsolete. Better invest the rupees into the future of skilled developers.
Conclusion: the financial reorganisation ("US crisis") may have nothing to do with the situation in India.
please stop beating moon everyone knows the truth. ".....by the time the plant is ready to produce chips, the underlying technology may be already obsolete. Better invest the rupees into the future of skilled developers....." that satellite sure did deeply sew plant seeds for future of skilled developers.
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please read first 2 comments by posters
http://www.dailytech.com/Indian+Moon+Probe+Hits+Moon+Surface+at+3100+MPH/article13450.htm