New Delhi, March 7 (IANS). Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnav on Saturday said India is moving rapidly towards the target of producing 85,000 semiconductor design engineers under the ‘Chips to Startups (C2S)’ initiative. The minister said that the government is laying special emphasis on talent development and skill enhancement in the semiconductor sector.
The program is part of the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), which aims to create strong talent for the country’s emerging chip industry through training, skill development and workforce development. Vaishnav said that good progress has been seen in the first four years of the 10-year C2S programme.
He informed that world-class Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools from global technology companies like Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems, Siemens, Renesas Electronics, Ansys and AMD have been made available in 315 educational institutions in India.
According to the minister, through these tools, students are getting practical experience of semiconductor chip design.
The chips designed by the students are being fabricated and tested at the Semiconductor Laboratory (SCL), Mohali. With this, students are getting experience of the entire process from design to fabrication, packaging and testing.
He said that this initiative has now become the world’s largest open-access EDA program, with more than 18.5 million hours of EDA tools used so far for chip design training.
Students from institutes across the country, from Assam to Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir to Tamil Nadu, are now actively taking part in semiconductor design activities.
Referring to global industry trends, Vaishnav said that the size of the semiconductor sector could increase from the current $800-900 billion to around $2 trillion. This will create demand for approximately 20 lakh skilled professionals across the world and create huge employment opportunities for the youth of India.
He also announced that under ‘India Semiconductor Mission 2.0’, this program will be expanded from 315 to 500 educational institutions, thereby further strengthening the talent pool across the country in the field of semiconductor design, fabrication, packaging and testing.
–IANS
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