The Hindu Business Line : IBM, Atmel bid for SCL fab upgrade

The decades-old facility of the Chandigarh-based SCL - now an autonomous society under the Department of Space (DoS) fold - is being modernised at a budget of a few hundred crore rupees.

The aim is to turn it into a plant capable of making 0.35-micron or even 0.25-micron application-specific chips.

Both options are open - either rejigging the whole facility to 0.25 microns at a higher investment or go in for 0.35 microns by acquiring more sophisticated equipment, a senior DoS official familiar with the developments told Business Line. The old fab's capability is only for 0.8-micron technology.

The space agency has also inserted a small buyback clause for the contractor.

The bids in response to a global tender were received until September 5.

Technical evaluation may take another month and ISRO/DoS expects to have the upgraded plant in place 18-24 months after it signs up the contractor.

The SCL upgrade plan, according to the official, is to have an indigenous, reliable and less expensive source of semiconductors for ISRO's launch vehicles and satellites, for Defence, strategic programmes and perhaps even for consumer electronics items.

These components are currently being sourced from the US and Europe. The current rejuvenation plan should suffice for at least 6-10 years, the official said.

While 0.35m technology is definitely not considered state-of-the-art and the number of new design starts in this class is steadily coming down, it can still address many local low-end needs, according to Dr Anand Anandkumar, MD of Magma Design Automation India, a chip design solutions company.

A local 0.35-m fab could still be immensely useful to sectors such as aerospace, automotive, Defence, biomedical and low-end consumer electronics.

"0.35m is still being used particularly for analog/mixed signal designs and low-performance digital ICs. The return on investment will be good in a booming market like India, which consumes a lot of ICs."

According to ISRO officials, a spacecraft requires roughly Rs 10-15 crore worth of chips, which is nearly 50 per cent of the total electronic components but accounts for 10-15 per cent of the project cost.

Even it its earlier avatar, SCL (as former Semiconductor Complex Ltd under the Department of IT) was making a few critical components for ISRO centres.

It has produced VLSI circuits, Railway, telecom and industrial products and components for the DoS and BARC.

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