Collaborative design for successful semiconductor manufacturing?

Driving around in any city in India one cannot help but notice the overwhelming spread of base station towers clearly stating the growth the mobile services industry has seen over the past few years. Consider this, in four years (May’03 to May’07), the number of subscribers on GSM networks in India have grown 9x from 14million to 130million. Mobile services are not the only ones on a steep growth path, broadband users are expected to grow 6x from 2005 to 2010, the LCD/Plasma TV market still in its nascent stages has started showing promising growth and the PC marketing is doubling every 3 years. There is growth in automobiles, with several new models being specifically made for the India market and designed in India, which will drive new semiconductor demand for making these cars cost efficient yet safe. In Healthcare, Manufacturing, Retail and Hospitality industries new units are being established which will use up equipment and electrical modules of all kinds which will further drive semiconductor demand as well.

It is already being seen that a lot of this equipment and modules are being designed in India to meet the specific requirements of the Indian market in all these industry segments. While the majority of the designs today will still use standard semiconductor parts imported into India, soon as the volumes grow, it will make sense to design custom semiconductor devices to meet the India specific requirements. At that point, it couldn’t be better to already have large fabricating units manufacturing the heart of these devices – the silicon transistor.


Completing the Semiconductor ecosystem
For the Indian semiconductor firms, these are exciting times.

The EDA firms are established in the design of tools in India and serving a growing number of top design service providers, as well as the captive design units of large multinationals doing their design in India. The major worldwide Intellectual Property companies are developing some of their core products in India and are collaborating with design service companies and other product companies to offer differentiation and time to market advantage in the designs that are done here.

The EMS industry is already getting established to cater to manufacturing requirements of fast moving consumer electronic products that are driving the Indian economy. Setting up of a local silicon fabrication unit brings good news for the end users who would be looking forward to the reduction in the overall costs of the electronic products and equipment (as semiconductors account for 20-25% of the overall cost of a product).

Cost reduction in electronics products and equipment is not the only idea behind having an India based semiconductor manufacturing unit. We can expect such a unit to have a positive impact on India based semiconductor design engineering firms with a possibility of increased early collaboration with the semiconductor manufacturing unit in the design cycle of products being designed and manufactured for local consumption. This can enable these products to be designed to meet the exact requirements of the India market, using the most economical semiconductor manufacturing process and the best time to market possible for these products. This could further increase overall consumption of semiconductors as mass market electronics products are released with a focus on costs, feature set and time to market.

Impact on Design services
This strengthening of the Indian semiconductor ecosystem is likely to provide a further boost to the design services industry. For India, already developing as a hub in IC design, proximity of design service companies to a local mass semiconductor fabrication facility would mean a possibility to develop a design methodology and infrastructure which is tightly coupled to the semiconductor manufacturing processes. This (targeted design methodology) is absolutely necessary considering the high costs associated with multiple iterations of semiconductor designs especially in advanced semiconductor manufacturing processes. The opportunity to establish a sound methodology would also allow the service providers to improve value provided to their clients across the world.

Of course, the design houses would be looking forward to a competitive cycle time for both multi-project wafer and production to be able deliver a faster time-to-market for the products they design for domestic or international clients.

Concerns for the fab
Clearly it’s the high volume, low power computing and consumer electronics products that make economic sense for the semiconductor fabrication facility to operate in India but as the Indian economy grows, multiple other applications as mentioned above will present opportunities for such a semiconductor manufacturing facility. This translates into a whole host of problems such as managing equipment utilization across various manufacturing process offerings, apart from matching the costs and yields to that of the worldwide industry leaders, and establishing newer or next generation process technology to be effective in the high-volume market.

The need to collaborate

These challenges could dampen the spirits of the industry as we go along and perhaps the obvious way to succeed is for the entire Indian semiconductor industry to collaborate. The semiconductor manufacturer would need to share process models and qualification results with the design engineering companies. The design engineering & pure play IP firms would need to help the manufacturer build a proven portfolio of Analog and Digital Intellectual Property, including re-usable cores and libraries, in the process technologies it has to offer. A qualified design engineering support system that enables easy access to technology in the form of libraries (from established vendors), IP and process information would also help build a symbiotic relationship with the fabrication facilities to address the ‘system’ design challenges of the future.