Government Announces ₹4,500 Crore Investment for SCL Mohali Modernisation; Rules Out Privatisation

Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw and Minister of State Ravneet Singh visited the Semiconductor Laboratory (SCL) in Mohali on Friday to review ongoing modernisation activities.

During the visit, Vaishnaw announced that the Government of India will invest ₹4,500 crore for the upgrade and expansion of SCL Mohali. He stated that the facility will be modernised and will not be privatised. The announcement was made at an event where 28 student-designed semiconductor chips, fabricated at SCL, were handed over to their designers from 17 academic institutions.

These 28 chips were designed using Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools provided under the Chips to Start-up (C2S) programme. With this handover, the total number of student-designed chips fabricated at SCL under the programme has reached 56.

The Ministers inaugurated the Semiconductor Process Gallery and the Abhyuthanam Training Block at the facility. The Process Gallery includes a clean room lab with earlier-generation fabrication tools to provide students practical exposure to semiconductor fabrication and ATMP processes. The Abhyuthanam Training Block offers online and offline semiconductor training modules along with hands-on fir...