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Semiconductors, computing hardware and data centres

Chips, computing hardware and data centres: how chips are designed and made, India's semiconductor programme, supercomputers, export controls on chips, and the power and water a data centre draws. Prelims has asked where India's semiconductor plants are.

Showing 4 of 8 subjects, those that changed from 1 to 15 July 2026.Show all

Semicon India Programme

Prelims and Mains

A chip passes through three stages before it is sold, and the intellectual property is created in the first of them. The Semicon India Programme, begun in 2021, went after the other two.

It approved 12 projects across six States, including Micron's assembly and test plant and a Tata Electronics wafer fab built with Taiwan's Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation.
India has many chip design engineers, but most work for multinational companies, so the designs and the intellectual property belong elsewhere.

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

From The Indian Express, 1 September 2026

Semicon 2.0

The Centre notified the second phase of the programme with ₹1,27,500 crore under the India Semiconductor Mission. Where the first phase bought factories, this one buys the stage before them.

Strategic chips

For national security and critical infrastructure
Government names the IP and chips it wants
C-DAC selects developers by bidding
IP jointly owned by company and C-DAC

Commercial fabless firms

Seed funding
Electronic design automation tools and multi-project wafer runs
Royalty financing for larger firms
Open to firms owned by Overseas Citizens of India

Deployment linked incentive

An incentive linked to net sales of new Indian designed chips
Capped per application and per company

From The Indian Express, 1 and 2 September 2026

Capital support widens beyond wafer fabs to compound semiconductor, photonics, sensor and display fabs, packaging, equipment, materials, research and talent.
Design gets three tracks of its own, to turn Indian designers into Indian owned fabless companies.

What changed

1 Sep 2026
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)
15 Jul 2026Update
- The Union Cabinet approved Semicon 2.0 with an outlay of ₹1,27,500 crore.
- Capital support falls from a uniform 50 per cent to 40 per cent for silicon fabs, 35 per cent for other fabs and advanced packaging and 25 per cent for conventional packaging, while chip design can get up to 75 per cent.
- The near term focus stays on mature nodes of 28 nanometres and above, which make up about 70 per cent of world demand.
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)
4 Jul 2026Update
- The CG Semi assembly and test plant at Sanand began commercial production, the third approved unit to do so.
PIB, 4 Jul 2026: Chip Momentum Would Boost the Atmanirbhar Bharat Mission: Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw (opens in a new tab) · The Hindu, 4 Jul 2026: India's semiconductor push will create countless jobs: PM (opens in a new tab)

Background reading: 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)

UPSC has asked

Prelims 2026: semiconductor plants in India and their locations

Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme

Prelims and Mains

The scheme succeeds the production linked incentive for large scale electronics and pays a share of eligible sales, with extra incentives for components sourced in India and for Indian brands that design their own products.

What changed

15 Jul 2026New subject
- The Cabinet approved a ₹62,500 crore scheme for 2026 to 27 to 2030 to 31, after the production linked incentive for large scale electronics ended on 31 March 2026.
- The base incentive is 2.25 to 5 per cent of eligible sales, with up to 1.5 per cent more for sourcing components in India and a further 3 per cent for Indian brands that design the product.
PIB, 15 Jul 2026: Cabinet approves Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme (MPMS) (opens in a new tab)

High bandwidth memory

Mains

High bandwidth memory is memory stacked vertically and connected to the processor through very wide data paths, which is what training large artificial intelligence models depends on, and two South Korean firms make most of it.

What changed

10 Jul 2026New subjectalso in news
- Two South Korean firms hold nearly four fifths of the market for high bandwidth memory, the stacked memory that AI training depends on, and semiconductors are now about a quarter of South Korea's exports.
Frontline, 10 Jul 2026: Demand from artificial intelligence has turned memory chips from a low margin commodity into a scarce input controlled by two firms, and South Korea's economy is now visibly concentrated on it. (opens in a new tab)

Data centres

India's data centre capacity

Prelims and Mains

A data centre is counted in megawatts rather than in floor space, because electricity is what it really consumes and what it must be given without a break. India's stock of that capacity has grown more than fourfold since 2020, and the projections for the next five years are steeper still.

Uninterrupted power and constant cooling are the two demands a data centre makes of the place it stands in, and together they are its environmental cost.

375 MWInstalled capacity in 2020

1.57 GWInstalled capacity in August 2026

Nearly 8 GWCapacity projected for 2030

17 GWData centre demand expected by the Central Electricity Authority for 2031-32

From the Press Information Bureau (PIB) backgrounder, 14 September 2026

What changed

14 Sep 2026
PIB, 14 Sep 2026: Data Centres in India: Infrastructure for the Digital Age (opens in a new tab)
14 Sep 2026
- Data centres gained infrastructure status through the Harmonised List of Infrastructure in 2022–23.
- The SHANTI Act, short for Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India, lets future Small Modular Reactors supply them.
PIB, 14 Sep 2026: Data Centres in India: Infrastructure for the Digital Age (opens in a new tab)
28 Jul 2026Updatealso in news
- An industry projection puts operational capacity at 2.2 GW in 2025, rising to 12 GW by 2030, with AI dedicated capacity growing from 275 MW to about 6,500 MW. The official figures in the standing part count differently and are not replaced.
The Hindu, 28 Jul 2026: 'Data centre capacity to jump to 12 GW as AI fuels demand' (opens in a new tab)
9 Jul 2026Updatealso in news
- Gujarat notified India's first State data centre policy, for 2026 to 29, which includes support for captive desalination plants to meet the sector's water demand.
The Hindu, 9 Jul 2026: 'Data centre capacity to jump to 12 GW as AI fuels demand' (opens in a new tab)

Also filed elsewhere

Photonics · on Satellite and emerging communications
Photonics is where India's chip policy meets its network hardware: the parts that carry a signal as light rather than as current.