A fabless designer and a fledgling manufacturer have agreed to work together on getting locally designed silicon built at home.
L&T Semiconductor Technologies, wholly owned by Larsen & Toubro, signed the partnership with Tata Electronics. Target markets are automotive, industrial, communications, security and the intelligent edge.
The division of labour is straightforward. The design house brings engineering and product definition. Its partner brings foundry, assembly and test capacity.
Both will jointly examine fabrication and packaging options for current and future L&T products, and work on design-to-fab optimisation so designs scale in volume.
Sandeep Kumar, chief executive of the design house, framed the deal as industrialisation rather than invention, arguing that leadership now depends on turning designs into sellable product.
Randhir Thakur, who runs Tata Electronics, described it as a step toward a full-stack national industry built on domestic value addition.
Tata’s operations already span assembly and test in Assam, a fab under construction in Gujarat, and sites in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
The design house keeps offices in Austin, Munich, Tokyo, Bengaluru and Noida, and is building a portfolio across power, compute, analog and mixed signal, radio frequency and IoT modules.
The arrangement rides on India’s Semicon 2.0 programme, unveiled in late August with $15B of support.
