Renesas exploring local production of chipset

Semiconductor company Renesas is exploring the local production of chipsets that the company is developing in partnership with leading software company TCS, a senior official of the company said.

Last month, Tata Consultancy Services and Renesas Electronics Corporation (Renesas) opened a joint innovation centre in Bengaluru and Hyderabad to jointly develop semiconductor chipsets for wireless technologies, industrial technologies, etc. for the global market.

The company’s Executive Vice President and General Manager, IoT and Infrastructure Business Unit, Sailesh Chittipeddi told PTI that the collaboration is on the lines of ‘Make in India to make for the world’.

“Partnership with TCS will start bearing fruit in two years in the form of semiconductor chipsets and system solutions for both Indian and global markets. We aim to explore pathways to locally produce these chips as part of the Make in India initiative with partnerships,” Chittipeddi said.

Renesas gets most of its semiconductors from third-party electronic chip plants, which are then processed into System on Chip. The SoC integrates multiple computing functions on a single chipset, like a processing unit, memory, graphics, etc.

Renesas is the world’s largest microcontroller and third-largest automotive semiconductor company, as per market research firm Gartner.

The Japanese semiconductor company will develop SoCs with TCS initially for 4G and 5G telecom networks and industrial technologies.

“The hardware part will come from us. We will work jointly on the firmware. Software and other stacks will come from TCS,” Chittipeddi said.

TCS and a state-run, C-DoT-led consortium have bagged a contract to deploy 4G and 5G technologies in the BSNL network.

“We are starting first in the telecom space in partnership with Tejas and Saankhya. Simultaneously, there are other things that are going on in the area of industrial applications,” Chittipeddi said.

Semiconductor company Saankhya Labs was acquired by Tata Group’s telecom gear maker Tejas Network last year.

Renesas at present has partnerships with Chennai-based SPEL Semiconductor for the assembly of its chipsets and Bengaluru-based Tessolve Semiconductors for the design of the chipsets.

Chittipeddi said assembly and testing companies will come up faster than semiconductor manufacturing plants.

He said that Renesas is in talks with other semiconductor assembly and testing companies in India as well, besides its existing partners. Bloomberg