RFP for chip design, manufacture to be released soon

The Centre will be soon be coming out with a request for proposal (RFP) for the manufacture of a new chip which will help in making in the forthcoming indigenous navigational system or NavIC developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) use becomes more widespread.

“In two weeks the RFP will be released inviting the industry to design, develop and sell 10 lakh NavIC chips with the support of the Government of India,” said Union Additional Secretary for IT & Electronics Ajay Kumar on the second day of the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA)’s Fourth edition of ‘Deftronics’ here on Friday.

He forecast that in the next couple of years NavIC could become a household name just like the existing popular GPS (Global Positioning System), Galileo and others, perhaps even become a good substitute.

Chip development

The chip development at an optimum cost could be akin to the set top boxes prepared for the conditional access system (CAS) few years ago when there was a dearth of domestic manufactures but soon a Bangalore based firm made up to 10 lakh pieces.

Mr. Kumar said a chip design incubation centre was established, with an outlay of ₹20 crore, at the IIT-Hyderabad where outsiders too can make use of the facility, the faculty and the knowledge ecosystem.

Electronic clusters

He pointed out that the Centre had already sanctioned two electronic manufacturing clusters for Hyderabad (21 overall in the country) at a total estimated outlay of ₹1100 crore with 50% cost to be shared with the State.

Some ₹1.30 lakh crore investments in the sector were in the pipeline with 300 applications awaiting various clearances.

Defence Research and Development labs including the premier missile and avionics facility — Research Centre Imarat (RCI) — are being able to develop several critical technologies and components for the defence and aerospace sector but they need the industry support to get into the volumes production considering the needs of the armed forces, said Director B.H.V.S. Narayana Murthy.

With the future wars to be based on how networked the weapons systems are, the need for various kinds of sensors, navigational systems, avionics, radars, telemetry, telemetry and so on was immense as the armed forces requirement runs into scores of weapons systems.

Production capability

“We have been successfully testing these complex products in our labs and have the design know-how but our production capacity is limited so we are ready to handhold the industry through transfer of technology,” he said.

Requirement for fused metals, ceramics, gyroscopes, radio frequency seeker technology, high accuracy antennas, etc., is huge for use in missiles and weapons systems. Even the foundries to make some of these material was not available within the country, Dr. Murthy added.