India, Sept. 23 -- India's semiconductor push is getting closer to its most visible milestone: the first chips emerging from new fabrication plants. Yet "first silicon" can easily be misunderstood. It is essentially trial production, proof that the fabrication process can produce working silicon.

For the industry, the more important question begins after that milestone. Can the same process produce good chips consistently, at volume, and with yields that make manufacturing commercially viable?

That distinction matters because India's semiconductor progress cannot be measured simply by whether a fab produces its first wafer. The larger test is whether the country can connect manufacturing with design, intellectual property (IP), packagin...