Signalchip, India based fab-less semiconductor company which has revealed India’s first semiconductor chips for 4G and 5G modems. Today, at an event in New Delhi, Signalchip made the announcement of the new semiconductors in the presence of Telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan. The new launch has added India into the elite category of countries who can build and design semiconductor chips. There are only 8 countries around the globe which are capable of manufacturing these kinds of chips.
In brief, Signaltech said that the new series of chips namely SCBM34XX and SCRF34XX/45XX have been developed after deep R&D for the past 8 years. The code-named ‘Agumbe’ semiconductor chips are specially crafted for 4G and 5G modems. In total Signalchip has unveiled four chips and the details are as follow:
- SCBM3412: a single chip 4G/LTE modem including the baseband and transceiver sections in a single device
- SCBM3404: a single chip 4X4 LTE baseband modem
- SCRF3402: a 2X2 transceiver for LTE
- SCRF4502: a 2X2 transceiver for 5G NR standards
Additionally, these new chips have been embedded with NAVIC, India’s own satellite navigation system. It is built on the SCRF1401, RF transceiver chip launched in 2015 by Signalchip.
Further, speaking at the occasion, Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan, said, “This is a proud moment for India’s Digital Communications industry. I congratulate the Signalchip team for designing India’s first indigenous semiconductor chips for 4G/LTE and 5G NR modems. India aspires to take a leadership role in developing inclusive 5G technologies for economic self-sufficiency and strategic needs of the country. These chips are a significant step in this direction as they have the potential to cater to the growing digital connectivity needs of the next 5 billion users, by enabling high-performance mobile networks at lower cost.” She added, “The Signalchip team’s persistence over the 8-year R&D period and the commitment shown by Sridhar Vembu to believe in this vision is indeed commendable.”
These new chips are particularly designed to evolve new network architectures like RAN/CRAN. With the invent of these chips, companies now have the potential to design more complex chips which can directly integrate for advanced 5G NR features. Signalchip’s new high performance and cost-efficient systems are capable to enable densification of India’s vast networks.
Signalchip’s founder and CEO, Himanshu Khasnis said that until now devices manufactured in India or imported from outside use imported silicon chips. He further added that it is quite a complex and challenging activity which need deep R&D and mastery of different domains. Himanshu stressed on the pros of the indigenously developed silicon chips and quoted that, “wireless communication is central to almost all economic, strategic and domestic activities happening today, the ability to indigenously design and develop silicon chips is vital for the security and prosperity of our country.”
Well, it is a significant development, which has allowed India to enter the elite group of countries developing semiconductor chipsets.
