"TAKING CHINA HEAD-ON ISN'T THE BEST STRATEGY"

"The substantial investments China is making in chip manufacturing poses a risk of overcapacity, making it difficult technologically to profit from less advanced nodes"

- CHRIS MILLER

When I spoke with the Synaptics CEO in 2022, he said the semiconductor manufacturing ship has sailed already, even for a country like the US as TSMC’s expertise would be hard to replicate due to various reasons at the cutting edge. It would be better to help Taiwan rather than compete. You yourself have said that the US has no intention of becoming like Taiwan either. But has the ship sailed for India as well? 

It takes a long time to build a semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem. If you look at how long it took Taiwan to go from zero to being the world’s leader – it took almost half a century. To say that it is too late for India would be unfair (I do not know where the world is going to be in half a century).

It is impossible to build a semiconductor ecosystem very quickly as it takes a lot of time, money, and training. But I would be surprised if there aren’t a couple of new chip factories in India in a couple of years because there is interest from the private sector coupled with government incentives.

Currently, I see a lot of interest coming in at the assembly and tests level in India and there will be a lot of focus on design. This will be a long process, but on a lot of the key early metrics, India is doing relatively well.

Does this imply that manufacturing the most advanced chips is currently beyond India’s reach, potentially leading to a fo