CDIL to expand chip ATMP; fab plans later

Co will utilize PLI, SPECS schemes for new testing, packaging lines

- Gulveen Aulakh 

Continental Device India Pvt. Ltd (CDIL), India’s oldest semiconductor company that moved away from manufacturing 15 years ago, may set up its own fab in India in the long term, a top executive said, provided an enabling ecosystem comes up in the country. In the meantime, it is focusing on its local ATMP (assembly, testing, marking and packaging) business, expanding its 500 million unit capacity by 100 million units more.

The company will bank on the government’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme and the Scheme for Promotion of Manufacturing of Electronic Components and Semiconductors (SPECS) to set up two new ATMP lines, Prithvideep Singh, general manager, CDIL Semiconductors, said in an interview.

“We’ll be adding 100 million units capacity. In this particular plan, the first phase has already been installed. Fifty million will be coming within another six to eight months and subsequently another 50 million," said Singh, the grandson of Gurpreet Singh who started making silicon chips and devices under CDIL in 1964 in collaboration with Continental Device Corp. of Hawthorne, California, which was later called Teledyne Semiconductor Co.

The Indian company’s expansion comes close on the heels of global player Micron announcing an ATMP unit in India with an investment of over $800 million over five years. Singh did not disclose the investment his company will make for adding the capacities.

On being asked whether CDIL was looking at building a fab in the country, Singh said while the company was considering the possibility since they had expertise in it, having operated a local fab in the past, the decision would be contingent on a number of factors.