Govt working on 25 chipsets with Indian IPR to fight cyber attacks

The semiconductor and AI (artificial intelligence) mission is moving fast even as it charts a $500 billion electronics-production target by 2030. ASHWINI VAISHNAW, minister for electronics and information technology, railways, and information and broadcasting, in an interview with Surajeet Das Gupta in New Delhi, unravels the action on the ground and the move towards localisation. Edited excerpts:

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Under the semiconductor scheme, the government has given a push to designing chips in the country through the design-linked incentive (DLI) scheme. How has been the response and how much work has been done?

We are working on designing 25 chipsets where the IP (intellectual property) will be owned in India. These include chips where the day-to-day risks of cyber-security threats are high, like in surveillance cameras or wi-fi access points. We have 13 such projects ongoing in this space under the scheme and some have made good progress.

These chipsets can be used by all users. Now they are imported. The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Bengaluru, is the nodal agency. When we have our own IP, we get security from attacks and, second, it becomes a product. For ages we have been a services nation though our design engineers are designing for the world. We should now have the IP rights as well as products too in the country. These can be manufactured in our upcoming fabs, which are getting ready.