BANGALORE, INDIA: According to Dr. Pradip K. Dutta, Corporate Vice President & Managing Director, Synopsys (India) Pvt Ltd: “Building wafer fabs in India involves an element of national pride and should also make business sense. The government has to look at fabs from a national policy perspective. If there were any company breaking ground in India, to build a clean-room, we would have known.”

A fab is a highly capital intensive project. “I hope we can see some concrete proposals by this time next year. It is too premature to say that the Indian fab story is disappearing,” he states, in an exclusive with CIOL.

Dutta says: “Keep in mind that we have a three-year window. So there is no reason for getting worked up right now, as the window is still there. The business people will only open up their cards in the final stages. I have reasons to believe by summer of 2009, there will be some actual stakeholders.”

A fab is a very economically complex business. In the next five-10 yrs, there is a strong feeling that there may be only three to four companies globally, as IDMs, and the rest move into foundry.

Dutta stresses: “To expect India will have a 5bn, 45nm, capable fab is something that needs to be examined. The business case has to be the driver.”

The semicon policy has definitely been a good start. What has happened since is, the ancillary manufacturing industry is taking advantage of this policy.

“The government is quite optimistic that as we reach next year, by this time, companies will firm up their plans, as the industry window is three years. We believe that concrete proposals will come in by that time,” says Dutta.

The government wants to see a state-of-the-art facility come up as well. Dutta notes: “Maybe, 50 percent of all ICs sold globally, can be built on 0.25-micron technology. However, under the current semicon policy, we want to encourage state-of-the art manufacturing.”