Semi-Conductor Laboratory

The Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL) is a public sector undertaking (PSU) of the Government of India, and was founded as the Semiconductor Complex Limited, in Mohali, Punjab. SCL was formed to develop India's ambitions for establishing a semiconductor manufacturing industry. At first, Navi Mumbai was the leading contender for where SCL would be established, however, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi eventually selected Mohali as the location for where SCL would be set up. The facility restarted production in 1997, however, the fire halted the growth of India's semiconductor industry. SCL came under the administrative control of the Department of Space (DoS) in March 2005, and has since undergone organisational restructuring to become focused on research and development. The society was registered in November 2005. In 2006, Semiconductor Complex Limited was renamed to the Semi-Conductor Laboratory. As of 2023, SCL is under the administrative control of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). == Facility and production ==

SCL is India's only integrated device manufacturing facility. Over 200 of types of CMOS devices can be made by SCL's wafer fabrication facilities. Indian Institute of Technology Madras uses SCL as a primary foundry to tapeout SHAKTI processors using its 180 nm technology process. In 2021, SCL and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) invented India's first indigenous semiconductor memory technology. SCL and IIT Bombay demonstrating a CMOS-180nm-based 8-bit memory technology, that can also be adopted for production. The Bharat Semiconductor Research Centre will be located at IIT Madras. The center will be established initially as an institution co-located with Semi-Conductor Laboratory, with the potential to split off into a stand-alone semiconductor research organization in the future. == Modernization efforts and fab upgrades ==

The Government of India is attempting to modernise SCL. In February 2023, the Indian government informed a Parliamentary Standing Committee that a joint venture with a commercial partner is being sought to modernise SCL's existing facility. In May 2023, the Indian government announced that it will invest $2 billion in SCL for the purposes of research and prototyping. The initial amount that Indian government was going to invest was approximately around $1.3 billion, however, the investment amount was later increased to $2 billion. SCL's modernisation will be a brownfield modernisation as a chip manufacturing unit. ==References==