Ashwini Vaishnaw releases 2-nm Qualcomm chip, calls it major development for country

Bengaluru: Union Minister for Railways, Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, on Saturday, released the new two-nanometre Qualcomm chip and said that it is a major development for the country.

Speaking in Bengaluru, Union Minister Vaishnaw made the statement while inaugurating Texas Instruments’ new product research and development facility in Bengaluru.

The Union Minister said, “I am very happy to share with you that today we unveiled the 2 nanometer wafer and 2 nanometre chip at Qualcomm. It’s a series of developments companies are now designing end to end products in India.”

“Gone are those days when most of back office development was done here, and now from the entire customer product definition to design, the final silicon, getting it taped out and getting it validated, that entire thing is being done in India,” he added.

“This is a major development for our country, our industry. I would like to thank to all those pioneers here in Qualcomm, who have taken the challenge few years ago, I requested them to go ahead in the most advanced designs in India and I thank them for taking up that challenge and doing it in India,” Union Minister Vaishnaw said.

Congratulations to the entire team for doing this in India, he added.

Talking about the wafer, Union Minister said, “This is the wafer in which each die contains nearly 20 to 30 billion transistors. One die, the small square you see here, has about 20 billion transistors. To put it in perspective, 20 billion equals 2,000 crore or 20 lakh crore.”

Exhibiting the tiny silicon chip, he said that this is basically having GPU and the CPU within this small chip.

“The end product which comes out of this is a module which will be AI computer on the desktop of any person on the edge, meaning on the camera, within the wifi router, or within any device on the machine or any moving car or automobile or train. That kind of development is happening,” the Union Minister added.

“This breakthrough has firmly placed India among countries working on cutting-edge chip design, alongside companies such as AMD that have already demonstrated such capabilities.”

Union Minister Vaishnaw also said, “India is making significant progress in semiconductor manufacturing and chip design.”

Though the semiconductor sector is relatively new in the country, the Union Minister said the entire semiconductor ecosystem is rapidly taking shape and preparing for large-scale growth.

The development also established India from being a software provider and a back-office to an end-to-end semiconductor product design and development hub, he added.

IANS