Ritu Sodhi & Udayan Ganguly
Research Track @ SemiX
The crux of SemiX is the technical advances we can make at IIT Bombay and in collaboration with our industry and academic partners and advisors. Our goal is to lead and contribute to technical innovation in the field of semiconductor technology in India. With that in mind, the Research Track at the first SemiX annual summit highlighted the innovative research projects at IIT Bombay, showcased the internal capabilities and lab facilities, received feedback from industry leaders, and identified areas of collaboration in several critical areas.
We defined three main research focus areas: Circuits and systems, Device technology and materials, and Advanced Chip Packaging. These were further split into ten sessions, with the expected overlap and collaboration.
- Memory Devices & Circuits
- Logic Technology
- Analog Mixed Signal Design
- Flexible Electronics
- Power and ESD
- Neuromorphic and AI Chips
- Digital IC Design
- Materials and Processing
- Advanced Packaging
- Quantum Technologies
IIT Bombay faculty members and their students attended sessions aligned with their research work, along with eminent industry representatives from leading local and global companies. These included TI, Applied Materials, Tata Electronics, Micron, AMD, Intel, Reliance, ROHM Semiconductor, NXP, and many others.
An all-hands workshop followed, where we summarized feedback from all ten sessions. Key takeaways from the workshop include:
- Students need to be more “industry-ready” and cross-disciplined.
- Longer-term Internships are the most preferred way of engaging and training students.
- Industry experts should offer seminars and short courses at the universities, conduct design reviews, and provide project feedback.
- There is a need for closer interaction between academia and industry, possibly through a forum where all industry partners and faculty can share problems and experiences.
- There is a need for platform-based communication and not just a one-way ask from the industry to the academia.
- Need for improved communication among the faculty. They should be aware of each other’s activities via seminars and deep-dive interactive forums to share their work and challenges, brainstorm, and learn from each other’s experiences. This will help build a cohesive community.
- There should be some level of cross-training between industry, VCs, faculty, and students.
Actions going forward:
- Put together an initial proposal for the top 2 -3 research topics
- Have follow-up discussions with industry partners for their buy-in and commitment
- Build a plan - with short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals/deliverables
- Build a cohesive proposal with clear actions, dates, owners, and required funding to be presented to the government
The research teams have started working with industry experts from companies like Renesas, TI, Seagate, and ROHM to define pilot projects.
We have also started engaging with other universities such as IIT-Bhubaneswar, IIT-Roorkee, and IIT-Gandhinagar.
We will launch two training programs with Synopsys—one on 28-nm CMOS technology (tentatively scheduled for June 2024) and the other on Power Electronics (date to be decided). Both programs are aimed at training students and young engineers as part of workforce development.
This is the right time and certainly the right place to be! We at SemiX, are ready to bring more people on board to lead the country in gaining leadership in semiconductor technology!
