Analog and embedded chips are the small, cheap chips that sense the world, control a machine and manage its power. They are inside washing machines, ceiling fans, smart meters, payment cards, two-wheelers and cars. A modern car holds more than a thousand of them. They open the windows, fire the airbags, run the brakes and manage the battery. Most of the chips made in the world are of this kind, not the powerful processors in laptops and phones.
A chip, or integrated circuit (IC), is a small piece of silicon, a few millimetres across, on which transistors and their wiring are built. A transistor is a microscopic switch that an electrical signal turns on or off. Chips are made many at a time on a wafer, a thin disc of very pure silicon, usually 200 or 300 millimetres across. The wafer is then cut into separate chips. Each piece is called a die. The die is sealed in a package, the small black case with metal pins or pads that is soldered onto a circuit board.
Inside a machine, these chips do four jobs: sense, convert, decide and drive. Consider what happens when you twist the throttle of an electric scooter in Pune. A sensor in the grip measures how far you turned it. It produces a voltage that rises from about 1 volt at rest to about 4 volts when fully open. That voltage is analog: it changes smoothly, with no steps. An analog-to-digital converter measures it thousands of times a second, and turns each measurement into a number between 0 and 4,095. The page on analog and digital explains why this conversion is always needed.
The microcontroller in the motor controller reads that number. It also checks the speed and the battery. It then works out how much current the motor should receive, and it repeats this calculation about 20,000 times a second. Its software is embedded software, a form of firmware. Power semiconductors then carry the large currents. Six power switches sit between the battery pack and the motor's three wires. They turn on and off about 16,000 times a second, and the share of time they stay on sets how much current reaches the motor. The rear wheel speeds up a few thousandths of a second after your twist. Makers are also starting to add a fifth job: a TinyML chip runs a small AI model that checks the motor's vibration for early signs of a worn bearing.
This market differs from the market for processors. These chips sell for a few rupees to a few hundred rupees each, but in billions. One chip design can stay in production for 10 or 20 years, because cars and factory machines are built to last for decades. A carmaker tests and approves each chip before use, and then rarely switches. Being chosen in this way is called a design win.
These chips do not need the smallest transistors. Chip generations are named in nanometres (nm), a nanometre being a billionth of a metre, and a smaller number means smaller, more tightly packed transistors. Most analog, power and microcontroller chips are made at 28 nm or larger. That is the range planned for India's first large fab, Tata Electronics' plant at Dholera in Gujarat, described on semiconductor fabs in India. India has also designed these chips for longer than any other kind: the first multinational chip-design centre in India opened in Bengaluru in 1985. Today their makers design them in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Noida.