American chip maker LAM Research will open its second research and development center in India in September

American semiconductor equipment supplier LAM Research is setting up its second research and development (R&D) center in India in September. In an interview, Rangesh Raghavan, corporate vice president and general manager of LAM Research, India, said the new facility will help the company’s engineers complete designs locally and reduce dependence on American counterparts.

“It will improve the abilities. Until now, we have relied on our American counterparts to build and test our designs,” Raghavan said. He said the new center, the company’s second in Bengaluru, will include a “state-of-the-art” hardware engineering lab consisting of deposition (a manufacturing process in which thin films of materials applied to the wafer), etching (chemical removal of layers from the wafer surface) and wet processing units (used for etching and cleaning wafers), along with AR/VR enabling functions.

LAM Research is a leading equipment supplier to semiconductor manufacturers such as Intel, TSMC, Samsung and Micron. The company already has over 2,000 employees in India and the new facility will help bring most of its work to the country. “It will help create a network of local suppliers to contribute to the economy,” Raghavan said. According to an April 2022 report by industry body Indian Electronics and Semiconductors Association (IESA), India could represent an $85-100 billion global semiconductor manufacturing market worth 550- 600 billion USD by 2030.

Raghavan said that while semiconductor manufacturing in India is at an early stage, its presence in the ecosystem is already very strong by design. Major chip design companies including Intel, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and Nvidia already design chips in India.

He further said that more than half of the company’s hardware and software engineers are in Bengaluru. “More than 80% of our revenue comes from the Asia-Pacific region. Over the last few years, we have invested heavily in India and grown considerably. In India, we have seen 100% growth in the last two years,” he added.

Last December, the government had announced a ₹76,000 crore manufacturing and chip design incentive scheme. Domestic conglomerates, the Vedanta and Tata groups, are set to build manufacturing plants in the country.