Biden, Modi forge semiconductor agreements on fab plant, strategic partnerships

Days after interacting with global CEOs of the world’s leading semiconductors and chip ecosystem players during Semicon India 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with US President Joe Biden during his three-day official visit to the United States of America. The two leaders signed a pivotal agreement to set up a semiconductor fabrication plant in India.

The plant will be established with support from the India Semiconductor Mission as well as a strategic technology partnership between Bharat Semi, 3rdiTech, and the US Space Force. The fab will be established with the objective of manufacturing infrared, gallium nitride and silicon carbide semiconductors. Both, President Biden and Prime Minister Modi hailed this watershed arrangement that will be focused on advanced sensing, communication, and power electronics for national security, next generation telecommunications, and green energy applications.

“The new fab plant will be a wide band gap Compound Semiconductor Fab of GaN (gallilum nitride) and SiC (silicon carbide) wafers involving strategic partnership. This Fab, in our view, will be a Fab of future, that focuses on materials other than silicon and serves National security and defence needs for both US and India. Since its technology partnership includes the US Airforce, so we believe that this Fab facility will be part of a highly secure value chain including cyber security as different from India’s other commercial Fab and OSAT projects. All these developments are strategic for the US and India’s shared future of connected semiconductor supply chain,” explains Danish Faruqui, CEO of Fab Economics.

In addition to the proposed fabrication facility, the partnership will see GlobalFoundries (GF) launch the GF Kolkata Power Center, a dedicated hub for enhancing research and development in chip manufacturing technologies. This initiative is expected to drive significant advancements in critical areas such as zero-emission vehicles, connected devices, artificial intelligence (AI), and data centres. The GF Kolkata Power Center is poised to play a key role in accelerating innovations that will shape the future of these sectors.

Moreover, GF is also exploring long-term cross-border manufacturing and technology partnerships with India. This move will not only strengthen technological cooperation between the two nations but also create high-quality jobs in both India and the U.S., further boosting their respective semiconductor ecosystems. No further details about the GF Kolkata Power Center have been made available as of yet. An email sent to GF seeking additional information did not receive a response by the time of publication. However, GF already has a research and development presence in India.

In February 2024, GF was awarded $1.5 billion in direct funding under the US CHIPS and Science Act, part of that investment is targeted towards enabling the high-volume manufacturing of critical technologies including GaN to securely produce more essential chips. As part of US CHIPS Act funding utilisation GF acquired Tagore Technology’s proprietary and production-proven Power Gallium Nitride (GaN) IP portfolio to combine it with GF manufacturing prowess to deliver, high-power density solution designed to push the boundaries of efficiency and performance in a wide range of power applications in automotive, internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) data centre, adds Faruqui.

“There is a gold rush to build semiconductor fabs in India with most of the fabs being built for matured processes nodes targeting lower cost logic chips to RF components. Most of the Indian conglomerates looking to participate in the gold rush needs a technology partner to build a leading fab. GF is one of the leading and very few fabs when it comes to matured nodes building chips across a multitude of applications and could be a perfect partner,” says Neil Shah, Partner & VP of Research at Counterpoint Research. He adds, “Further, GF has been looking to increase its capacity with strong anticipated growth in multiple sectors in coming years and this agreement would be great for the company and Indian Semiconductor Mission to add one more big player into the mix.”

President Biden and Prime Minister Modi also praised combined efforts to facilitate resilient, secure, and sustainable semiconductor supply chains, and also celebrated the new strategic partnership between the U.S. Department of State and the India Semiconductor Mission, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in connection with the International Technology Security and Innovation (ITSI) Fund.

These pivotal agreements on semiconductor developments are a key component of the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET). The US-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) was announced in May 2022 between President Biden and Prime Minister Modi, and the National Security Councils of both countries were to coordinate with their respective ministries, departments and agencies to work with their counterparts to advance cooperation, and to engage with stakeholders.

Anurag Awasthi, Vice President of India Electronics and Semiconductors Association (IESA) states, “The co-location dynamics signify a growing footprint of large entities in semiconductors factoring India as a preferred destination. Diversification of technologies is closely linked to green processes as well as sustainability aspects as well. The national semiconductor policy looks at diversified technologies and thereby it is in line with the future trajectory of stated objectives.” The collaboration between India and the US underscores the commitment of both nations to build resilient and sustainable semiconductor supply chains, driving technological innovation in the years to come.

In June last year, during Prime Minister Modi’s state visit to the US, memory chip major Micron announced the plans to setup up decided to setup up a new semiconductor assembly and test facility in Gujarat, India with a combined investment of $2.75 billion by Micron and the two government entities. Since then, India has approved three more testing and packing plants by Tata Electronics, CG Power and Kaynes, and a semiconductor fab by Tata Electronics.

During Semicon India 2024, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Electronics and IT (MeiTY), stated that the Indian government has successfully completed the first phase of its ambitious Semicon India initiative, which aimed to establish the country as a global hub for semiconductor manufacturing and design. MeiTY is now formulating the roadmap for Semicon 2.0, which is expected to be announced in the next 3-4 months.