Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: Union Minister for Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw on February 7 unveiled a high-tech 2-nanometre chip manufactured by Qualcomm. On the occasion, Vaishnaw underscored the country’s rapid progress in building an end-to-end semiconductor ecosystem.
Speaking at the event, Vaishnaw said the development marks a shift from India’s earlier role as a back-office destination to a hub for end-to-end semiconductor product development, from customer product definition through silicon design, tape-out, and validation.
“Our country is making major progress in the semiconductor manufacturing design and getting the entire ecosystem in our country. It’s a new industry,” he said. Holding a chip wafer in his hands, the minister described its capabilities and the precision manufacturing involved in it.
Vaishnaw noted that the newly designed wafer contains approximately 20 to 30 billion transistors, with each die–a small square on the wafer–housing nearly 20 billion transistors. He explained that the chip integrates both a CPU and a GPU.
“The end product which comes out of this is this kind of module which comes out, which basically becomes an AI computer on the desktop of any person on the edge, which means within a camera, within a Wi-Fi router, or within a device on any machine or any moving car, automobile, train or aeroplane,” he said. He lauded the Indian semiconductor talent developed under the Semicon mission.
