I think you're conflating 2 separate issues here . What do you mean by we have the talent pool ? If by we you mean Indians then you're mistaken . There's no difference between these " we " and those " we " who in our 1000 years of our slavery served foreign masters and helped prolong their rule . In other words ,they're mercenaries available to the highest bidder .
Just because a few Indians happened to develop chip sets doesn't mean India or Indians have the IPR to it.
No, you can't compare the Indian talent pool to the Chinese.
India conducts R&D for the West, the Chinese only produce low end stuff for the West. Both Intel and Cisco have their second biggest R&D centers in India. The same for many other countries. Even if an Indian company does not hold IPR today, we have the ability to generate new IPR very quickly, when the time to invest in it comes.
I also don't subscribe to your theory that the Chinese lack expertise in this field . How do you explain the fact that most of the leading foundries are in China and some are of Chinese origin . I'm afraid you're simplifying matters here when you state that since the Chinese lack skilled personnel they're seeking to poach foreign talent . Rather they lack advanced technological expertise which explains why they're shopping in the West for such Chip R&D firms primarily and secondarily for such talent pool as they're seeking .
The Chinese definitely have expertise. But we have a head start when it comes to talent pool.
Bangalore designs Intel's first quad-core processor - Times of India
There's a dichotomy in what you're suggesting . Down below you explain away the measly 2.5k Crore investment as we have to start somewhere & out here you're expecting the market to mature before the big Indian cos commit massive investment assuming the GoI is willing to underwrite a significant part of it .
We need the fabs today to cater to some parts of the market. For example, when it comes to Silicon fab, AMD wants to make India their production hub for the entire world. But this fab will start small, and then scale up, which can take as much as 10 years.
The market has to mature. It's not a choice.
Your logic of where was China 10-15 years ago in this field is also frayed . China laid the foundations then . Which is why they're where they are today - Just a generation behind .
It's because their market is mature. They are making real investments for large scale production as a $15T economy. Whereas we already have the talent pool that they lack even today.
Without talent pool, other stuff like money and govt support are useless. The UAE has tried and failed. The Chinese are pouring that much money in order to get the talent pool. Otoh, Intel is training dozens of Indians every year in their Bangalore office.
Just look at their designations.
https://www.glassdoor.co.in/Salary/...e-Salaries-EI_IE1519.0,17_IL.18,27_IM1091.htm
‘Intel will continue to hire in India’
And this is just one company.
Designing chips for the world - Times of India
The department of electronics and information technology (DeitY) says that nearly 2,000 chips are being designed every year in India and more than 20,000
engineers are working on various aspects of chip design and verification.
Electronics industry to set up 3 chip design centres
We aren't going to play in the big boys league by merely investing 2.5 K Crore without building the entire eco system and taking steps to nurture this fledgling enterprise by implementing protectionist measures .
The 2.5K Cr is about technology, not scale. Instead of making millions of processors a year, they will be able to make 10,000 or even just 100. This is not about very large scale production meant for global exports. The world isn't ready yet for GaN processors. Very few high end industries will be using it. That's why the project is lead by IISc, not by some company.
There is no difference in technology when making 20 F-35s a year versus 200 F-35s a year. To build 20 F-35s, you will need to spend only about $2B. To make 200, you may have to spend $20B. So what you see in other countries is the scale of the production. We don't need to make such investments.
For some reason, you are comparing scale with design talent. Our market cannot handle that scale, but we design stuff that the entire world uses.
GoI certainly can't do it alone and as of now for some strange reason they haven't sat down across the table with senior indigenous industry representatives to ask them what their plans were on this front .
It's been happening since a long time.
For if we depend on GoI to run the show from R&D to chip fabrication , this would be going down the same way the entire Tejas program turned out.
I think the article is right on the buck when it says that we ought to follow the standard template that nations like Taiwan , Japan , South Korea or even China followed which is a privately managed and driven enterprise with Government finances & other support .
The govt will not manage anything. Their job is to provide infrastructure, easy financing and subsidies.
