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Semiconductors, 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 4 of 7 articles, those that changed from 1 July to 30 September 2026.Show all

Semicon India Programme

Prelims 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

From The Indian Express, 1 September 2026

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

Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme

Prelims and Mains

The Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme succeeds the production linked incentive for large scale electronics, and pays a share of eligible sales.

It pays extra for components sourced in India and for Indian brands that design their own products.

What changed

15 Jul 2026New
- 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.
PIB, 15 Jul 2026: Cabinet approves Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme (MPMS) (opens in a new tab)

Data centres

India's data centre capacity

Prelims and Mains

A data centre is counted in megawatts of IT load, because uninterrupted power is what it must be given and constant cooling is what that power becomes.

India's capacity has grown more than fourfold since 2020.
Data centres gained infrastructure status through the Finance Ministry's Harmonised List in 2022 to 2023, which opens them to cheaper and longer term lending.

What changed

9 Jul 2026BriefGujarat notified India's first State data centre policy, for 2026 to 29, with support for captive desalination plants. The Hindu, 9 Jul 2026: 'Data centre capacity to jump to 12 GW as AI fuels demand' (opens in a new tab)
11 Jun 2026
- Two Adani data centres for the Google Adani hub in Andhra Pradesh were cleared within nine days as category B projects.
- A category B project needs no public hearing when its built up area is under 1,50,000 sq m, and both sites sit just under it.
- A petition before the National Green Tribunal challenges the clearances.
Mains: The Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006 predates hyperscale data centres and lets them be appraised as buildings; critics argue for category A where sites lie within 10 km of protected or critically polluted areas.
Frontline, 11 Jun 2026: Is Andhra Pradesh's data centre push a recipe for disaster? (opens in a new tab) · The Hindu, 5 Jun 2026: AI to double data centre power and water consumption by 2030, UN researchers say (opens in a new tab)

Data centres: water, cooling and siting

Prelims and Mains

Data centres are cooled by carrying their heat away with water, which makes cooling the demand that meets a local limit first.

Water and efficiency

A 100 MW data centre uses about 2 million litres of water a day; a conversation of 20 to 50 exchanges with a chatbot uses about half a litre.
The Bureau of Indian Standards measures a data centre by Power Usage Effectiveness: total electricity used divided by the electricity its IT equipment uses.
It also measures Carbon Usage Effectiveness, the Cooling Efficiency Ratio and Water Usage Effectiveness.
The building must meet the Energy Conservation Building Code 2017 and the Energy Conservation and Sustainable Building Code 2024.
Direct to chip liquid cooling, adiabatic cooling and immersion cooling bring the ratios down.

Clearance and siting

Environmental clearance is needed only where a data centre forms part of a building project over 20,000 sq m or a township, and it is granted by the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority.
State incentive packages ask for neither a water disclosure nor a grid impact assessment, so the clustering has been towards States already short of water.

What changed

26 Jul 2026
- Residents of Thane protested against a hyperscale data centre needing about 422 MW of continuous power, in a city already short of water by 40 million litres a day.
- In Visakhapatnam and Anakapalli, land allotted for a 1 GW hub drew objections over water, power and nearby forest.
- Maharashtra cut the green energy requirement for such projects from 100 to 51 per cent in June 2026.
The Hindu, 26 Jul 2026: Why are mega data centre projects facing stiff resistance? (opens in a new tab) · Frontline, 7 Aug 2026: A residents' campaign against a hyperscale data centre inside Thane city has turned data centre siting into a mainstream environmental dispute in Maharashtra, with water, power and heat as the contested grounds. (opens in a new tab) · The Indian Express, 23 Jul 2026: Data centre construction is being halted abroad over power, water and local costs, as India expands its own (opens in a new tab)

Background reading: PIB, 14 Sep 2026: Data Centres in India: Infrastructure for the Digital Age (opens in a new tab)

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.