Govt will soon launch new PLI scheme for IT hardware: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

The Central government will soon launch an information technology server and IT hardware production linked incentive (PLI) scheme, and also offer additional incentives for manufacturers that incorporate Indian-designed intellectual property into their products, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Tuesday.

Virtually addressing the VLSI Design Conference 2023 that began here today, Chandrasekhar said the government has announced Future Design Programme, which invests USD 200 million in startups that will design or co-design IP, tools or devices for the next generation of applications in India.

"By 2024, we believe India would have stepped into the semiconductor manufacturing space and catalysed a more domestic design and innovation ecosystem where we are encouraging startups to work with the leading global majors to develop IP, to develop devices either co-owned or owned for which the government has announced Future Design Programme," he said.

"To make sure that these devices and the innovation ecosystem is fully supported by the market, we will soon be launching an IT server and an IT hardware PLI that will be similar to the mobile phone PLI which has been extremely successful. In the IT PLI, we will create additional incentives for those manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that incorporate Indian-designed IP into their systems, into their products," he said.

Chandrasekhar said, "We are putting government capital to work in actively catalysing the Indian semiconductor ecosystem and working with the industry and the global diaspora to ensure that our ambition of India as a semiconductor nation will be realised very rapidly".

The minister further said the Centre is also focused on Digital India RISC-V (DIR-V) programme for next generation microprocessors to achieve commercial silicon and design wins, according to a release by the organisers.

The five-day conference themed "Semiconductors Driving Disruptive Innovations in Global Digitalisation" is designed to bring together key stakeholders, and represented by engineers, students and faculty, industry professionals, academia, researchers, bureaucrats, and government organisations, it said.

Telangana government's Principal Secretary of Information Technology Jayesh Ranjan said the state is at the forefront of the startup revolution and has already created a wave of opportunities for innovation and startups across the technology sector and VLSI field, with leading semiconductor companies having their base, and rapidly expanding in Hyderabad.

In his address, Satya Gupta, President of VLSI Society of India, highlighted the role of VLSI in developing and accelerating the pace of the sector in India and how it shaped the growth of startups.

Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by putting together thousands of transistors into a single semiconductor microchip. A microprocessor is a commonly used VLSI device in the electronics industry.

With scaling reaching its fundamental limits, he said it is time to look at addressing technological challenges at higher levels of abstraction in CMOS-based design and at the same time, look beyond silicon for further performance enhancement, the release said.

CMOS stands for "Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor", which is a technology used to produce integrated circuits. CMOS circuits are found in several types of electronic components, including microprocessors and batteries.