Indian Semiconductor Industry
The Indian semiconductor industry began in 1962 with Bharat Electronics, a Government of India owned unit, starting production of discrete germanium semiconductors. Continental Devices India Ltd. was another company which started discrete semiconductors production at the same time. In 1983, Semiconductor complex ltd. was set up under the Government of India in Chandigarh, to manufacture ICs for the telecom and industrial sector. They started commercial production with 5 micron CMOS technology in technical collaboration with American Microsystems Inc in 1984. The turning point in the Indian semiconductor industry came with Texas Instruments (TI) opening an office in India in 1985 to carry out design work for its operations abroad. It was the first multinational to set up design operations in India.The major inflow of companies occurred only later in the 90’s, when companies such as Analog Devices, National Instruments, ST Microelectronics and IBM came to India. The Mid 90’s saw fully designed semiconductor products coming out of Indian development centers. 2000 onwards, other players in the semiconductor eco system, particularly Electronic Design Automation (EDA) companies along with some Indian chip designing companies, such as such as Arcus Technology Pvt Ltd, Centillium Communications, CG Core EL, etc. started opening their development centers in India.