Why Is It So Difficult To Make Them Semiconductor Chips?

The shortage of semiconductor chips has hit businesses across sectors. But despite the demand, only a handful of companies have the capability to make them. Where does India stand and why is it so difficult to make them?

- Nidhi Singal

Look Around You. In your pockets, your home, your office. On your way to office or a vacation. Look at how you communicate with colleagues or loved ones. How you cook. How you wash clothes. And shop. Or pay your bills. In fact, look at everything you do when awake. What’s common? It’s something that’s hidden, inanimate, seemingly innocuous, but omnipresent. And it just stopped the world.

“A single semiconductor chip has as many transistors as all of the stones in the Great Pyramid in Giza. And today there are more than 100 billion integrated circuits in daily use around the world— that’s equal to the number of stars in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy,” the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), a US trade group, says on its website.

Yet there aren’t enough chips in the world to meet the skyrocketing demand. Global chip sales hit $48.8 billion in October 2021, a 1.1 per cent increase over September and a 24 per cent jump from October 2020, as per the SIA. And why not? Semiconductors, after all, are the brain of every electronic device. For instance, without a chip to control the motor’s speed, an electric toothbrush would be, well, just an ordinary toothbrush. A car houses anywhere between a few hundred and thousands of chips that handle everything, from the basics of keyless entry to the complex engine control unit (ECU). And one can only imagine the number of chips in high-end defence systems or spacecraft.