7 ms·

Tata joins hands with PSMC to build India's first 12-inch fab

93 points by RetroTechie 3y ago

rjzzleep 3y ago
Will this end up like every other Tata collab where Tata eventually just takes full ownership and edges the partners out for a minimal payout?
- alephnerd 3y ago
  Tata Electronics is organized the same way as TCS - they want to be a middle manager who isn't directly investing in R&D due to margins. By maintaining the partnership with a foreign partner, they can get fairly advanced manufacturing IP and knowhow without having to R&D from scratch. Indian companies don't have the need for 100% IP transfers like China because most have had shared IP partnerships with Western countries for generations (all the way back to the British Raj), nor have private sector Indian entities ever faced sanctions similar to China or Russia/USSR in the 20th century. This also helps adjacent Tata Motors, as they were severely impacted by the chips shortage and the battery shortage (for their EV division), along with Tata Advanced Systems (the defense contractor) who need commodity chips for a number of it's armament SKUs.
  - mayama 3y ago
    India is on various blacklists of various western govt for military or advanced tech thoroughout cold war and even until recently. Pentium chips were denied even as late as 90s. Sanctions on Indian started to ease after 123 agreement, but India is still on US entity list restriction. There is difference though, as most major Indian companies hardly invest in R&D and are happy to just keep using licensed IP from west. Indian companies, and general public, have very little risk appetite.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      > various blacklists of various western govt for military or advanced tech Indian private sector corporations were excluded from the sanctions regime. Until a couple years ago (like 2015 or 2016 I think), all Indian defense manufacturing and R&D was done by PSUs like Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bharat Electronics Limited, Armoured Vehicles Nigam Limited, etc > Pentium chips were denied even as late as 90s For Nuclear Non-Proliferation reasons, which was done by the Indian public sector. India straight up didn't have a private sector MIC until the 2010s. > India is still on US entity list restriction It's public sector units, not the private sector players like Tata who have work with companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing for over 20 years. > Indian companies hardly invest in R&D ... Indian companies, and general public, have very little risk appetite It's because of the financials. India allows 100% foreign ownership in R&D FDI, so there's no reason for Tata Electronics to try and build a local chip design R&D arm when Nvidia and Intel have massive R&D labs in Bangalore and Hyderabad that have been chugging along since the 2000s and can pay salaries in USD. There is some incipient work on making indigenous RISC-V architecture chips, but it looks like bullshit to me.
      - geodel 3y ago
        > but it looks like bullshit to me. Can't it be used for things like smart power meters, water supply, or myriad other non-mobile 'smart things' or even that is tall order considering their capabilities?
        alephnerd 3y ago
        > smart power meters, water supply, or myriad other non-mobile 'smart things' I can buy a commodity AMD processor for less.
      - mayama 3y ago
        > Indian private sector corporations were excluded from the sanctions regime. Most blacklists are regarding product codes. No separate carve out for pvt companies. Sure after 123 agreement, most restrictions are being negotiated and lifted slowly and India is not being added to new blacklists. But, that is recent phenomenon.
  - ganeshkrishnan 3y ago
    >Indian companies don't have the need for 100% IP transfers like China because most have had shared IP partnerships with Western countries for generations Not true at all. Even the indian space agency was sanctioned till few years back.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      ISRO is a PSU. It's not private sector. > * nor have private sector Indian entities ever faced sanctions similar *
- akmittal 3y ago
  PSMC is not an investor. They are just there to provide technology/help in setting up Fab. PSMC will get paid for this. PSMC already know all the terms, they didn't even wanted to become investors.
alephnerd 3y ago
India is following the Chinese model of starting off in Memory Fabrication and Packaging to build up Fab infrastructure. There's a similarly sized Packaging plant opening in Assam in Northeast India, and India is working with Tower Semiconductors to restart the SCL Fab in Chandigarh, which back in the 1980s used to sell Intel knockoffs to the Soviet and Indian defense industries before it was burned down during the Khalistan insurgency. It doesn't hurt that the ministers leading India's semiconductor strategy was part of the team that designed and fabricated the Intel i486 in the 1980s-90s [0] and managed GE Transportation and Siemens Transportation in India [1] At least India already has a very strong Hardware and Chip Design base, as most companies do Semiconductor Design in India already, and have been since TI opened their office in Bangalore in the early 1980s, and most EDA software is coded in the India offices of Synopsys, Cadence, Ansys, Siemens, etc. Edit: Cool article from the early 1980s about India's initial attempt at chip fabrication - https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/economy/story/19831015-semiconductor-complex-in-mohali-industrial-complex-set-to-become-a-mini-silicon-valley-771115-2013-07-17 https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/economy/story/19831015-se... Most Indian and Indian American leadership and middle management in the Electronics and Chips industry are alumni of SCL Mohali. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajeev_Chandrasekhar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajeev_Chandrasekhar [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashwini_Vaishnaw https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashwini_Vaishnaw
- mnadkvlb 3y ago
  where does it say in your links that these people were part of the team that designed chips in the 90s ? Are these wrong links maybe ?
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    Here's Rajeev Chandrashekar's interview with IIT/IllinoisTech which he is an alum of - https://magazine.iit.edu/fall-2012/ahead-curve https://magazine.iit.edu/fall-2012/ahead-curve Vaishnaw wasn't on the chips side. He's Engineering Management (GE and Siemens and a Wharton grad)
  - capybara_2020 3y ago
    "He was handpicked by Vinod Dham to join Intel and worked there from 1988 to 1991. At Intel he was part of the architectural team that designed the i486 processor." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajeev_Chandrasekhar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajeev_Chandrasekhar
seo-speedwagon 3y ago
Doesn’t chip fabrication require enormous amounts of water? How’s that going to play out when India is expected to start facing serious water availability issues?
- alephnerd 3y ago
  India has an area of 1,269,219 square miles. Water Availability is a local issue largely isolated to the Deccan Plateau (Telangana, interior Andhra Pradesh/Rayalseema, interior Karnataka, interior Tamil Nadu, interior Maharashtra, southern Madhya Pradesh) and northern Rajasthan. Also, fabs tend to reuse water (as there are purity requirements so you'd be stupid from a margins standpoint to not recycle water used in a fab)
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    Would also note that one of India's greatest geopolitical weaknesses is its blockade potential. You don't want to find yourself limited to unguided munitions a few months into a shooting match.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      > blockade potential Not really. Most chips that India's MIC uses that aren't domestically fabricated comes from Tower Semiconductors' fabs in Israel, and the India's Eastern Naval Command has near complete control over the Eastern half of the Indian Ocean as there are massive naval and listening posts in Madagascar, Tanzania, Djibouti, Oman, UAE, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerala, etc -------- Also, Guided Munitions have been manufactured in India since the 2000s. Israeli ballistic missile manufacturers like Rafael, IAI, Elbit, etc did a 100% IP ToT to Indian PSUs and private sector defense contractors when the Chinese MIC was sanctioned for Tiananmen in the 90s. There was a whole corruption scandal over this in India that lead to the collapse of the Vajpayee Administration, and had some blowback in Israeli politics in the 2000s as well.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
cfgauss2718 3y ago
Am I the only person who saw this headline and thought WOW, 12 inch transistors!?
- alephnerd 3y ago
  Go big or go home!
- lawlessone 3y ago
  Maybe they've built a 12 inch fab. For Makers or sometging.
- JAlexoid 3y ago
  Never say never... I also would love to own a 12" transistor :D
- detritus 3y ago
  I'm now wondering how large a ~7-22nm detail-sized chip at 12" would be :) I'm guessing relativistic restrictions would hamper its clock speed, but presumably still quicker than 'chips in Minecraft'!
  - detritus 3y ago
    If I've got this right, according to chatGPT, an early-to-mid-year i7 would be in the ballpark of 800m in length, hahah.
    - danbruc 3y ago
      That does not seem right, depending on how you calculate, 100 km to 1000 km seems more realistic. The ratio between 7 nm and 12" is 43.5 million, that makes a 20 mm x 10 mm die 870 km x 435 km. But as we all know 7 nm is just a marketing term, so for a more realistic estimate, you have to pick some feature and scale that up to 12". That will bring you down an order of magnitude or so, but you are not going to end up in the meters range.
      - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
akmittal 3y ago
Intel planned to start fab in 2007, but Indian bureaucracy lost it to Vietnam. Atleast finally its happening again. https://www.forbes.com/2007/09/06/intel-india-china-markets-equity-cx_rd_0906markets1.html?sh=13d6e3384bf9 https://www.forbes.com/2007/09/06/intel-india-china-markets-...
- alephnerd 3y ago
  Yep, but the Intel Saigon plant wasn't successful either, and they've been downsizing their VN presence [0] The exact same problems with precision manufacturing in India exist in Vietnam as well. "Intel had raised concerns about the stability of power supplies and excessive bureaucracy ... Intel is also expanding its investment in chip packaging in Malaysia, one of Vietnam's main Southeast Asian rivals" [0] - https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-shelves-planned-chip-operation-expansion-vietnam-source-2023-11-07/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-shelves-planned-chi...
ramesh31 3y ago
Article doesn't mention node size. Any ideas?
axoltl 3y ago
This is the first time I’ve heard of 12 inch wafers. Are they actually 12”, or just 300mm wafers like everyone else uses?
- alephnerd 3y ago
  65nm process - https://inc42.com/buzz/tata-seeks-for-taiwanese-collaboration-for-guj-chip-plant/ https://inc42.com/buzz/tata-seeks-for-taiwanese-collaboratio... This fab is for memory chips (eg. RAM)
- b3orn 3y ago
  It's most likely 300mm, otherwise they'd have to make their own wafers.
sharadov 3y ago
They've been talking about this for the last 20 years - will see when it really happens. Lack of water, stable electricity and not to say inept Indian bureaucracy and corruption are to blame.

93 points by RetroTechie 3y ago

Will this end up like every other Tata collab where Tata eventually just takes full ownership and edges the partners out for a minimal payout?

alephnerd 3y ago
Tata Electronics is organized the same way as TCS - they want to be a middle manager who isn't directly investing in R&D due to margins. By maintaining the partnership with a foreign partner, they can get fairly advanced manufacturing IP and knowhow without having to R&D from scratch. Indian companies don't have the need for 100% IP transfers like China because most have had shared IP partnerships with Western countries for generations (all the way back to the British Raj), nor have private sector Indian entities ever faced sanctions similar to China or Russia/USSR in the 20th century. This also helps adjacent Tata Motors, as they were severely impacted by the chips shortage and the battery shortage (for their EV division), along with Tata Advanced Systems (the defense contractor) who need commodity chips for a number of it's armament SKUs.
- mayama 3y ago
  India is on various blacklists of various western govt for military or advanced tech thoroughout cold war and even until recently. Pentium chips were denied even as late as 90s. Sanctions on Indian started to ease after 123 agreement, but India is still on US entity list restriction. There is difference though, as most major Indian companies hardly invest in R&D and are happy to just keep using licensed IP from west. Indian companies, and general public, have very little risk appetite.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    > various blacklists of various western govt for military or advanced tech Indian private sector corporations were excluded from the sanctions regime. Until a couple years ago (like 2015 or 2016 I think), all Indian defense manufacturing and R&D was done by PSUs like Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bharat Electronics Limited, Armoured Vehicles Nigam Limited, etc > Pentium chips were denied even as late as 90s For Nuclear Non-Proliferation reasons, which was done by the Indian public sector. India straight up didn't have a private sector MIC until the 2010s. > India is still on US entity list restriction It's public sector units, not the private sector players like Tata who have work with companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing for over 20 years. > Indian companies hardly invest in R&D ... Indian companies, and general public, have very little risk appetite It's because of the financials. India allows 100% foreign ownership in R&D FDI, so there's no reason for Tata Electronics to try and build a local chip design R&D arm when Nvidia and Intel have massive R&D labs in Bangalore and Hyderabad that have been chugging along since the 2000s and can pay salaries in USD. There is some incipient work on making indigenous RISC-V architecture chips, but it looks like bullshit to me.
    - geodel 3y ago
      > but it looks like bullshit to me. Can't it be used for things like smart power meters, water supply, or myriad other non-mobile 'smart things' or even that is tall order considering their capabilities?
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        > smart power meters, water supply, or myriad other non-mobile 'smart things' I can buy a commodity AMD processor for less.
    - mayama 3y ago
      > Indian private sector corporations were excluded from the sanctions regime. Most blacklists are regarding product codes. No separate carve out for pvt companies. Sure after 123 agreement, most restrictions are being negotiated and lifted slowly and India is not being added to new blacklists. But, that is recent phenomenon.
- ganeshkrishnan 3y ago
  >Indian companies don't have the need for 100% IP transfers like China because most have had shared IP partnerships with Western countries for generations Not true at all. Even the indian space agency was sanctioned till few years back.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    ISRO is a PSU. It's not private sector. > * nor have private sector Indian entities ever faced sanctions similar *
akmittal 3y ago
PSMC is not an investor. They are just there to provide technology/help in setting up Fab. PSMC will get paid for this. PSMC already know all the terms, they didn't even wanted to become investors.

alephnerd 3y ago

India is following the Chinese model of starting off in Memory Fabrication and Packaging to build up Fab infrastructure. There's a similarly sized Packaging plant opening in Assam in Northeast India, and India is working with Tower Semiconductors to restart the SCL Fab in Chandigarh, which back in the 1980s used to sell Intel knockoffs to the Soviet and Indian defense industries before it was burned down during the Khalistan insurgency. It doesn't hurt that the ministers leading India's semiconductor strategy was part of the team that designed and fabricated the Intel i486 in the 1980s-90s [0] and managed GE Transportation and Siemens Transportation in India [1] At least India already has a very strong Hardware and Chip Design base, as most companies do Semiconductor Design in India already, and have been since TI opened their office in Bangalore in the early 1980s, and most EDA software is coded in the India offices of Synopsys, Cadence, Ansys, Siemens, etc. Edit: Cool article from the early 1980s about India's initial attempt at chip fabrication - https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/economy/story/19831015-semiconductor-complex-in-mohali-industrial-complex-set-to-become-a-mini-silicon-valley-771115-2013-07-17 https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/economy/story/19831015-se... Most Indian and Indian American leadership and middle management in the Electronics and Chips industry are alumni of SCL Mohali. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajeev_Chandrasekhar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajeev_Chandrasekhar [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashwini_Vaishnaw https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashwini_Vaishnaw

mnadkvlb 3y ago
where does it say in your links that these people were part of the team that designed chips in the 90s ? Are these wrong links maybe ?
- alephnerd 3y ago
  Here's Rajeev Chandrashekar's interview with IIT/IllinoisTech which he is an alum of - https://magazine.iit.edu/fall-2012/ahead-curve https://magazine.iit.edu/fall-2012/ahead-curve Vaishnaw wasn't on the chips side. He's Engineering Management (GE and Siemens and a Wharton grad)
- capybara_2020 3y ago
  "He was handpicked by Vinod Dham to join Intel and worked there from 1988 to 1991. At Intel he was part of the architectural team that designed the i486 processor." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajeev_Chandrasekhar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajeev_Chandrasekhar

seo-speedwagon 3y ago

Doesn’t chip fabrication require enormous amounts of water? How’s that going to play out when India is expected to start facing serious water availability issues?

alephnerd 3y ago
India has an area of 1,269,219 square miles. Water Availability is a local issue largely isolated to the Deccan Plateau (Telangana, interior Andhra Pradesh/Rayalseema, interior Karnataka, interior Tamil Nadu, interior Maharashtra, southern Madhya Pradesh) and northern Rajasthan. Also, fabs tend to reuse water (as there are purity requirements so you'd be stupid from a margins standpoint to not recycle water used in a fab)
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  Would also note that one of India's greatest geopolitical weaknesses is its blockade potential. You don't want to find yourself limited to unguided munitions a few months into a shooting match.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    > blockade potential Not really. Most chips that India's MIC uses that aren't domestically fabricated comes from Tower Semiconductors' fabs in Israel, and the India's Eastern Naval Command has near complete control over the Eastern half of the Indian Ocean as there are massive naval and listening posts in Madagascar, Tanzania, Djibouti, Oman, UAE, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerala, etc -------- Also, Guided Munitions have been manufactured in India since the 2000s. Israeli ballistic missile manufacturers like Rafael, IAI, Elbit, etc did a 100% IP ToT to Indian PSUs and private sector defense contractors when the Chinese MIC was sanctioned for Tiananmen in the 90s. There was a whole corruption scandal over this in India that lead to the collapse of the Vajpayee Administration, and had some blowback in Israeli politics in the 2000s as well.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago

cfgauss2718 3y ago

Am I the only person who saw this headline and thought WOW, 12 inch transistors!?

alephnerd 3y ago
Go big or go home!
lawlessone 3y ago
Maybe they've built a 12 inch fab. For Makers or sometging.
JAlexoid 3y ago
Never say never... I also would love to own a 12" transistor :D
detritus 3y ago
I'm now wondering how large a ~7-22nm detail-sized chip at 12" would be :) I'm guessing relativistic restrictions would hamper its clock speed, but presumably still quicker than 'chips in Minecraft'!
- detritus 3y ago
  If I've got this right, according to chatGPT, an early-to-mid-year i7 would be in the ballpark of 800m in length, hahah.
  - danbruc 3y ago
    That does not seem right, depending on how you calculate, 100 km to 1000 km seems more realistic. The ratio between 7 nm and 12" is 43.5 million, that makes a 20 mm x 10 mm die 870 km x 435 km. But as we all know 7 nm is just a marketing term, so for a more realistic estimate, you have to pick some feature and scale that up to 12". That will bring you down an order of magnitude or so, but you are not going to end up in the meters range.
    - 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

akmittal 3y ago

Intel planned to start fab in 2007, but Indian bureaucracy lost it to Vietnam. Atleast finally its happening again. https://www.forbes.com/2007/09/06/intel-india-china-markets-equity-cx_rd_0906markets1.html?sh=13d6e3384bf9 https://www.forbes.com/2007/09/06/intel-india-china-markets-...

alephnerd 3y ago
Yep, but the Intel Saigon plant wasn't successful either, and they've been downsizing their VN presence [0] The exact same problems with precision manufacturing in India exist in Vietnam as well. "Intel had raised concerns about the stability of power supplies and excessive bureaucracy ... Intel is also expanding its investment in chip packaging in Malaysia, one of Vietnam's main Southeast Asian rivals" [0] - https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-shelves-planned-chip-operation-expansion-vietnam-source-2023-11-07/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-shelves-planned-chi...

ramesh31 3y ago

Article doesn't mention node size. Any ideas?

axoltl 3y ago

This is the first time I’ve heard of 12 inch wafers. Are they actually 12”, or just 300mm wafers like everyone else uses?

alephnerd 3y ago
65nm process - https://inc42.com/buzz/tata-seeks-for-taiwanese-collaboration-for-guj-chip-plant/ https://inc42.com/buzz/tata-seeks-for-taiwanese-collaboratio... This fab is for memory chips (eg. RAM)
b3orn 3y ago
It's most likely 300mm, otherwise they'd have to make their own wafers.

sharadov 3y ago

They've been talking about this for the last 20 years - will see when it really happens. Lack of water, stable electricity and not to say inept Indian bureaucracy and corruption are to blame.