Israel-based Tower Semiconductors has for a while been considering India as a prime location for establishing a fabrication plant.

Having applied in 2022 and then revised the proposal again in 2023, Tower Semiconductor has been waiting for approval from the India Semiconductor Mission and the Ministry of Electronics and IT. 

Reports have been indicating the ministry’s apprehension about Tower Semiconductors 65nm technology, as globally, the increasingly edge nodes are 3n, 5nm, and 7nm. However, industry experts say that 65nm isn’t bad to start with for India.

The 65nm fab that Tower Semiconductor has proposed will fabricate analog chips that are used in a wide variety of applications, including analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, RF transceiver circuits including low noise amplifiers (LNAs), and filters that go in all electronics such as modems, smartphone, electric vehicles, WiFi routers, and more.

“Tower Semiconductors specialises in analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products and chips. Analog chips typically don’t have millions of transistors, unlike digital chips, which can provide a lot of capabilities in older nodes such as 90nm or 65nm. Today, analog and mixed signal chips for applications such as automobiles, defence/aerospace, medical electronics, sensors, power management, high-voltage, high-speed analog applications, etc. can be efficiently designed and manufactured in general purpose and specialty processes such as 65 nm or other legacy nodes,” said Satya Gupta, President, VLSI Society.