PM to inaugurate Micron’s ATMP plant in Sanand on Saturday

Ahmedabad: PM Narendra Modi will inaugurate Micron Technology's assembly, testing, marking and packaging (ATMP) plant at Sanand in Gujarat on Saturday, the state govt said. The facility, set up by Micron Semiconductor Technology India Private Limited with an investment of Rs 22,516 crore, is among the first large-scale semiconductor units set to start operations in the country.The Sanand plant will receive advanced DRAM and NAND wafers from Micron's global fabrication facilities and convert them into finished integrated circuit packages, modules and solid-state drives for the global market. These memory and storage solutions are critical components in data centres, consumer electronics and artificial intelligence (AI) systems.About 2,000 team members are already employed at the plant. Once fully operational, the facility will generate about 5,000 direct jobs.Sanjay Mehrotra, chairman, president and CEO of Micron Technology, said, "Memory and storage are central to modern computing, particularly in the field of AI. AI applications rely heavily on high-performance memory to process vast volumes of data and deliver faster, real-time responses, driving growing demand for advanced memory solutions."The project is positioned as a key step in strengthening India's role in the global electronics value chain. Micron indicated that citizens with disabilities are being employed as operators and technicians.Box: How an ATMP plant functionsSemiconductor manufacturing begins with the extraction of pure silicon from sand. The silicon is melted and shaped into cylindrical ingots, which are then sliced into thin wafers. At fabrication units, complex electronic circuits are printed on these wafers using processes such as photolithography, creating transistors and memory circuits in multiple layers. The wafers are subsequently cut into individual chips, which are then sent to an ATMP facility.At the ATMP plant, the chips are assembled into packages, tested for speed, memory capacity and reliability, marked with identification details, and finally packaged for commercial distribution.