India powers global semiconductor design with 20% of world’s chip engineers
India now hosts nearly 20% of the world's chip design engineers, making it a crucial player in the global semiconductor ecosystem. While U.S. engineers define chip architecture and strategy, Indian teams focus on implementation, testing, and optimisation.
India has established itself as a major component of the global semiconductor ecosystem, with approximately 20 percent of all chip design engineers worldwide headquartered in India, as reported by Bastion Research. India is now one of the major hubs of chip design and innovation thanks to the high presence of international players like Qualcomm, Intel, Nvidia, Broadcom and MediaTek.
The report has observed that India is strong in terms of chip design execution, testing and optimisation, whilst U.S.-based engineers are more focused on defining architecture and strategy. India, with the support of an increasing talent pool and government programmes such as the Semicon India Programme, is gradually increasing its contribution to the semiconductor value chain, reported by ANI.
Division of global chip design
The study indicates that American engineers deal with high-level choices like the chip type, functionality, desired performance, and product strategy. After these have been established, Indian teams port the designs to working logic, simulate and test chips and optimise for speed and power. They also create drivers, firmware and fine-tune electronic design automation (EDA) tools to provide compatibility with the industry at large.
In 2021, India gave its semiconductor aspirations a push with the introduction of the Semicon India Programme, which provided subsidies worth Rs 76,000 crore to lure international semiconductor producers. Although massive production units in the fabrication sector have not turned on yet, the policy backing, coupled with the enormous engineering supply base, puts India in a vantage position to become a decisive factor in the global semiconductor arena.