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India’s Chip Dream Takes Flight! Ashwini Vaishnaw Hands Over 28 Indigenous Chips Fabricated by Students at SCL Mohali
Summary: In a massive boost to India’s semiconductor ambition, Union Minister Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw handed over 28 student-designed chips fabricated at the Semiconductor Laboratory (SCL) Mohali. This milestone, achieved under the Chips to Start-up (C2S) Programme, marks India's rapid emergence as a global semiconductor powerhouse, with a unique, large-scale ecosystem being built by students and the state-of-the-art ChipIN Centre.
India's Semiconductor Leap: Students Design and Fabricate Chips at SCL Mohali Under C2S Programme
On November 28, 2025, the Semiconductor Laboratory (SCL) Mohali was the venue for a pivotal moment in India's journey toward digital self-reliance. Union Minister for Electronics & Information Technology, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, presided over a chip handover ceremony that showcased the direct impact of the Chips to Start-up (C2S) Programme.
The Minister officially handed over 28 fabricated chips-including 600 bare dies and 600 packaged chips-designed by talented students from 17 academic institutions across the country. This achievement is concrete proof that India is rapidly emerging as a distinctive leader in the global semiconductor landscape.
"Today, institutions across the country have access to some of the world’s most advanced design technologies, creating a large-scale semiconductor development ecosystem that is unique to India," Shri Vaishnaw stated during the event.
The Engine of Innovation: ChipIN Centre and the C2S Programme
The backbone of this remarkable success story is the Chips to Start-up (C2S) Programme and its operational hub, the ChipIN Centre in C-DAC Bangalore.
What is ChipIN Centre?
- Centralized Facility: ChipIN is one of the nation's largest facilities, offering a vast range of semiconductor design workflows and solutions.
- End-to-End Support: It provides advanced tools for the entire chip design cycle, along with crucial compute infrastructure, IP cores, and mentorship to academic institutions.
- Fabrication Gateway: It is the key aggregator, streamlining the process for students to get their designs fabricated at the SCL foundry.
The MPW Shuttle Process: Cost and Time Saving
The ChipIN Centre plays a crucial role in preparing student designs for fabrication at SCL Mohali using 180 nm technology. To save both time and cost, the Centre collects designs from C2S institutions, performs rigorous fab-compliance checks, and groups them onto a single mask-known as a Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) reticle.
In the past year alone, the ChipIN Centre successfully orchestrated five such MPW shuttle runs.
| Shuttle Name | Tape out Date | Designs Submitted | Institutions |
|---|---|---|---|
| MPW Shuttle-I | 06th Dec 2024 | 20 | 17 |
| MPW Shuttle-V | 30th Nov 2025 | 28 | 24 |
| Total | 5 Runs | 122 designs | 46 Institutions |
From these submissions, SCL Mohali has successfully fabricated 56 student-designed chips and delivered them back to the respective institutions, demonstrating a robust, high-volume pipeline for indigenous chip development.
Scale and Vision: A World-Class Ecosystem
The sheer scale of the C2S Programme highlights its global significance. The infrastructure provided by the ChipIN Centre is now recognized as one of the world's largest centralized chip-design user facilities.
- Academic Impact: Over 1 lakh students from participating institutions utilized more than 125 lakh hours of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools for their research and design activities.
- Start-up Boost: In the same period, the Centre supported over 90 startups, which consumed approximately 50 lakh hours of EDA tools.
This totals to an incredible 175 lakh hours of EDA tool usage, fostering an unprecedented environment for learning, research, and commercial innovation.
Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw underscored the national strategic importance of this progress, reflecting the vision of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. The ultimate goal is clear: to establish India as a major global semiconductor power, ensuring the nation's self-reliance (Aatmanirbharta) in strategic sectors by using indigenous chips.
With the successful execution of the C2S Programme and SCL Mohali's pivotal role, India is not just catching up-it is actively engineering its future in the high-tech world, one domestically fabricated chip at a time.
(Source-pib)
Keywords: India Semiconductor Mission,Chips to Start-up Programme,SCL Mohali
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