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हिन्दी — Read in HindiSemiconductors, computing hardware and data centres
Semiconductors and computing hardware: India's chip plants and design schemes, the chokepoints in the supply chain, supercomputers and data centres. Prelims has asked where India's semiconductor plants are.
Foundation note: A chip from sand to package: nodes, fabs and the India Semiconductor Mission
Showing 1 of 7 articles, those that changed from 1 to 30 September 2026.Show all
Semicon India Programme
Copy link to Semicon India ProgrammePrelims and Mains
The Semicon India Programme, begun in 2021 under the India Semiconductor Mission, backs the fabrication and the assembly and testing of chips in India.
Design
Engineers design the chip, creating its intellectual property (IP)
Fabrication
Circuits built on silicon wafers in a fab
ATMP/OSAT
Wafers assembled, tested and packaged into finished chips
How a chip is made
- A chip passes through three stages before it is sold: design, where the intellectual property is created; fabrication, where a foundry etches the design onto silicon wafers; and assembly, testing, marking and packaging, which turns wafers into finished chips.
- A fabless company designs and sells chips but outsources fabrication.
The programme
- It went after the last two stages first, approving 12 projects across six States.
- They include Micron's assembly and test plant and a Tata Electronics wafer fab built with Taiwan's Powerchip.
- India has many chip design engineers, but most work for multinationals, so the designs and the intellectual property belong elsewhere.
- The Semi-Conductor Laboratory at Mohali is India's only working fab, and student designs are sent there for fabrication under the Chips to Startup programme.
Semicon 2.0
- The second phase widens capital support beyond wafer fabs to compound semiconductor, photonics, sensor and display fabs, packaging, equipment, materials, research and talent.
- It gives design three tracks of its own, to turn Indian designers into Indian owned fabless companies.
- Where the first phase bought factories, this one buys the stage before them.
What changed
1 Sep 2026
- The Centre notified Semicon 2.0 with ₹1,27,500 crore under the India Semiconductor Mission.
- Capital support, a uniform 50 per cent before, now varies by kind of unit, and chip design gets up to 75 per cent.
- The near term focus stays on mature nodes of 28 nanometres and above, about 70 per cent of world demand.
The Indian Express, 1 Sep 2026: Semicon 2.0: What is India's Rs 1.27 lakh-crore push for chip design? (opens in a new tab) · The Indian Express, 1 Sep 2026: Domestic chip design to receive big push through Rs 1.27 lakh crore Semicon 2.0 (opens in a new tab) · The Hindu, 31 Aug 2026: Govt notifies ₹1,27,500-crore Semicon 2.0; spells out eligibility norms, sops for chip ecosystem (opens in a new tab) · PIB, 15 Jul 2026: Cabinet approves Semicon 2.0 - Government delivers on its commitment for a long-term policy support to Semiconductors in India (opens in a new tab) · The Indian Express, 15 Jul 2026: Cabinet approves India Semiconductor Mission 2.0 with a six-year outlay of about Rs 1.27 lakh crore (opens in a new tab)
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2026: semiconductor plants in India and their locations
Also filed elsewhere
- Photonics · on Satellite and emerging communications
Photonics is the technology of the parts that carry a signal as light rather than as current, where India's chip policy meets its network hardware.