Bengal IT minister Babul Supriyo on Wednesday reviewed the progress of semiconductor firm GlobalFoundries' fabless design and testing centre in Calcutta, which began operations last year at the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) incubation hub in Sector V, Salt Lake.
The company, which currently operates out of about 12,000 square feet at the STPI facility, is preparing to expand further within the same building, the minister said.
“We are thankful to GlobalFoundries for selecting Calcutta as their place to expand. They have taken about 12,000 square feet in this building, and they have been given further space in this same building to support their expansion,” Supriyo said.
Jitendra Chaddah, managing director and India country head of GlobalFoundries, said the company had established a design centre in the city focused on advanced semiconductor technologies.
“GlobalFoundries is proud to be here. We now have a design centre here where we do state-of-the-art work from design to testing to validation in gallium nitride and RF design technology and non-volatile memory. We have just started last year, and we are further growing this centre,” he said.
Gallium nitride semiconductors are gaining importance for their higher efficiency, smaller size and lower cost compared with conventional silicon-based technologies.
The Calcutta initiative was first announced in the India–US joint statement of September 2024, which outlined plans by GlobalFoundries — the world’s third-largest independent semiconductor foundry — to set up the GF Kolkata Power Centre.
The facility of the US firm is intended to strengthen bilateral research and development linkages in chip manufacturing and support applications such as low- and zero-emission mobility, connected vehicles, internet-of-things devices, artificial intelligence and data centres.
The expansion forms part its strategy to explore longer-term cross-border manufacturing with India. Following the announcement, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had extended the state’s support to establish a global capability centre in Bengal.