Micron plant may start chip assembly by ’24; next in line: manufacturing

The plant, which will come up at the Sanand Industrial Park in Gujarat, will essentially focus on packaging chips — it will transform wafers into ball grid array integrated circuit packages, memory modules and solid-state drives.

Officials said Micron’s plant could prove to be a major boost for India in setting up the country as an alternate destination for chip packaging, an area where another Asian country, Malaysia, plays a key role.

Malaysia has managed to rake up significant investments in its semiconductor ecosystem, including a commitment of $7 billion by chip giant Intel in 2021 to build a new semiconductor testing and packaging facility in the country by next year.

Micron, the fifth largest chip company in the world, will invest up to $825 million in its plant, which is expected to cost around $2.75 billion – 50 per cent of which will come from the Centre, and 20 per cent from the Gujarat government.

The company specialises in manufacturing memory and data storage modules, including dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), flash memory, and USB flash drives.

However, at its Gujarat plant, it will initially start with packaging semiconductor chips — a less complex process than manufacturing memory chips, albeit still an important part of the chips’ ecosystem.

Micron, which was recently barred by the Chinese government from national projects over alleged national security risks, said construction of the new facility in Gujarat is expected to begin in 2023 and the first phase of the project will be operational in late 2024. A second phase of the project is expected to start toward the second half of the decade, it said. The two phases together will create up to 5,000 new direct Micron jobs.

“This is just a beginning as there is more to come as India rapidly grows as a significant and trusted partner to global electronics and semiconductor value and supply chains,” Chandrasekhar said in a statement.

Other semiconductor majors also announced commitments in India to strengthen research and training of professionals in the sector.

Applied Materials said it plans to build a collaborative engineering centre in Bengaluru and intends to make a gross incremental investment of $400 Million over four years to establish the new centre.

Lam Research, which is a leading designer and manufacturer of products for semiconductor manufacturing, has proposed a partnership with India to educate and train semiconductor technologists through its ‘Semiverse’ solution.

Chandrasekhar said that under this solution, people can experience working in a chip lab through a virtual simulation.