Welcome to ISPEC and Welcome to a New Semicon India

For Next Generation of Semiconductors, Packaging and Systems R&D & Educated Workforce

Thanks to the visionary leadership of Hon. PM Modi Ji and Hon. Ministers Ashwini Vaishnav Ji & Rajeev Chandrashekar Ji, India is poised to become a global hub for semiconductors, packaging and systems (SPS) through their ISM initiative. I’m honored to have been chosen by them as an expert technical advisor and academic R&D leader to transform Indian electronics in my field of integrated systems packaging. India has all the fundamentals to be a global leader. It is correcting its two weaknesses in R&D and manufacturing technologies and expertise, through the ISM initiative. India has a well-educated workforce in basic sciences and engineering, unparalleled expertise, and resources in design and software. Global companies are very much interested in investing in India to design, develop and manufacture high-quality and cost-effective electronic products. The ISPEC conference brings the entire ecosystem of researchers, developers, suppliers, manufacturers and users together along with government and industry executives to make this happen

Technical Vision: A technical vision for India can be semiconductors, packaging or systems, or combining all to form integrated systems, integrating devices and system components into integrated system packages to serve a variety of strategic needs in four areas:

• • Automotive including power electronics with compound semiconductors
• • Computing and AI
• • 6G and beyond communications, and
• • Integrated sensors for IoT, medical and other applications

This integrated systems vision has the best potential to transform India from its current design-centric model at device level to system-centric model, from system design, fabrication, integration, assembly, and test to form end products that serve both growing domestic and global markets. This is particularly true, as the global industry moves into post Moore’s Law devices and systems which are currently at < 2nm in R&D and which provide <15% transistor performance improvement from node to node, in contrast to a 35% improvement during the peak of Moore’s Law, thus reinforcing the integrated systems vision.

Strategy to Attract Global Industry to India: Most domestic and foreign companies in India today are only focused on design and software. This is a small fraction of India’s capabilities. With the new focus on large scale R&D and manufacturing of semiconductors, packaging and systems, India is expected to grow its electronics market by 6-10x in the next ten years. Because of this and other reasons, India expects to be the 3rd largest economy by 2030. In addition, India believes it can be one of the lowest-cost electronics producers. All these are compelling reasons for global industry to invest in R&D and educated workforce for the global industry, paving the way for the next generation of manufacturing.

All this can happen only if we can attract a large number of global companies to India. The best way for India to attract a large number of global companies is if India invests in the infrastructure for large scale R&D and workforce development in all the strategic system designs and technologies, needed by global companies. This is the first reason. This is beginning to happen with the proposed infrastructure from ISM. The second reason for global companies to want to come to India is if Indian academic institutions perform large scale, global level R&D, unlike almost any other country, using its crown jewels—IITs and IISc’s, and private colleges and universities. But this R&D must be at a global level and for the next generation of global industry needs. As we all know, the Indian institutions have been producing the very best engineers in the world over the last four decades including those who are now CEOs, CTOs, and technical leaders of many large global companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, Micron, and Western Digital, to name a few. Their focus in phase one so far has been largely on workforce development. In phase two, they are completely capable of focusing on the two most important ingredients for global industry that no other organization can deliver: 1) developing the next generation of technologies the global industry needs and 2) educating students in those technologies. So the focus in phase two must be on industry-driven R&D and workforce development.

Georgia Tech PRC Industry Consortium Model to Transform Indian Semiconductors and Packaging: Traditionally, all top global universities perform high quality academic research addressing scientific and technical challenges that result in educating students, and publications in peer-reviewed journals. A small fraction of these, about 5%, result in discoveries and inventions that end up in products over the next 20 years. So there exist a gap known widely as the “valley of death” between academic R&D and industry’s need for manufacturing to make competitive products. To address this valley of death gap, many countries have created industrial institutes like Fraunhofer in Germany, ITRI in Taiwan, IME in Singapore and many others to develop industry-needed, ready-to manufacture technologies and transfer these to participating companies. They have been very successful, but their focus is technology development and scale-up, and not research to explore new concepts to make new products. They also don’t produce a workforce in any significant way. In the U.S., Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) is created to explore new long-term strategic frontiers to provide roadmap solutions for companies. Learning from all these and others, I have created an industry-academic-government (both state and federal) model at Georgia Tech that combines all the above and, in addition, develops programs that produce a large number of well-educated, cross-disciplinary, systems engineers at B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. levels. Georgia Tech was unique in that, it not only explored and demonstrated new individual strategic technologies, but also integrated these technologies into system prototypes and in so doing so, educated thousands of engineers at both technology and system integration levels. Georgia Tech is the first and perhaps the only university to have developed this model on such a large scale. But this model required more than faculty and students. It required full-time research faculty and on-campus industry engineers assigned by their global companies and it required state-of-the-art infrastructure, performing leading edge strategic R&D and advanced prototypes in the state-of-the-art experimental and pilot facilities.

As an advisor to ISM, I have begun to apply the Georgia Tech model in India through a 10-step process to set-up an industry consortium for large scale, global level, next generation R&D in 12 strategic SPS technologies involving 50-100 faculty from 13 top IITs and IISc’s and selective private colleges and universities, 24 academic experts from many well-known industry-centric R&D centers in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and 50 global companies. We have made outstanding progress and are ready to form an industry consortium in partnership with global SPS companies in India mid next year.

Benefits to Global Industry: There are many benefits to the global industry. The two most important are:

Workforce: A large number of well-educated students that are well- prepared in all strategic system design and technologies who can hit the ground running when they join companies upon graduation. A well-educated workforce is the single biggest current barrier to worldwide semiconductor, packaging and systems market growth.

Next Generation SPS Technologies: Large scale R&D, with intellectual property, developed jointly in partnership with the global industry thus addressing the strategic needs of the global industry. Supply chain companies can benefit by growing their R&D and manufacturing businesses, as India grows its electronics-based industry. India plans to invest $10B in manufacturing to start within, the next two years. Many global companies shown in Fig. 4 are interested in being part of both R&D and workforce programs.

Companies can benefit greatly from these large and historic investments by Government of India by simply using a small fraction of their CSR funds and by advising and guiding Indian faculty and students. The best way to begin this journey is ISPEC participation.

ISPEC Conference and Sessions: ISPEC brings and begins to create a complete ecosystem consisting of researchers, developers, manufacturers, suppliers and users in India. It is also the purpose of the conference for Indian and global collaborating faculty to propose about 50 next generation R&D projects in the 12 SRAs to about 50 participating global companies that are in attendance. The ISPEC conference begins today with the inaugural session, followed by industry and academic keynote talks and finishing with the director’s session. Day 2 is dedicated to R&D proposals to global industry by means of presentations and poster papers. Day 3 starts with a presentation on R&D and education infrastructure necessary in India, followed by workforce development programs. The last session brings global suppliers from the U.S., Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore in materials, processes and tools to form R&D and manufacturing partnerships in integrated systems.

Welcome To ISPEC and Welcome To The New Semiconductor Nation!

Prof. Rao R. Tummala

• • Advisor to ISM
• • Champion for Large Scale, Global-level R&D and Workforce Development in India
• • Emeritus Professor and Founding Director, Georgia Tech
• • Former IBM Fellow and Director of Packaging, IBM