The Hindu Business Line : ISRO to pick fab upgrade contractor soon

Bangalore May 18 ISRO says its nearly Rs 500-crore upgrade plan for its Chandigarh semiconductor fab facility is in a decisive stage and the contractor is to be finalised soon.

The evaluation of techno-commercial bids of the two original bidders - IBM Corp and Atmel Corporation - is in its last lap, a senior official in the Department of Space told Business Line.

At the last round of discussions held in Bangalore on May 8 and 9, the bidders have again been called for a decisive, reinforced meeting towards end-May.

"Hopefully this will be the last meeting," the official said.

As per the global tender called last September, the contractor is to supply and install new, 8-inch wafer fab equipment at the facility.

The modernisation plan will raise its year-old acquisition, SCL or Semiconductor Labs, from a lesser 0.8-micron chip technology to 0.25-m level over the next 18-24 months. The national space agency has now closed an alternative plan of going in for a 0.35-m technology, the official said.

On March 14, the Union Cabinet approved a Rs 484-crore sanction for the upgrade programme. The erstwhile public sector Semiconductor Complex Ltd, under the Ministry of IT, was transferred to the DoS in mid-2006 as an autonomous society. Since then, DoS has implemented a VRS plan for some 70 of 622 employees and is conducting training and re-orientation programmes for the remaining 552 employees.

The modernisation programme is meant to give an indigenous and inexpensive supply of semiconductors for ISRO's launchers and satellites, apart from other new and old customers.