From smartphones to aircraft, the miniature, delicate, and tiny microchips drive nearly every possible aspect of today’s life. In 2025, terms like chip wars and rare minerals dominated global headlines, while on the commercial scene Nvidia became the world’s first $4 trillion company — a fabless chip design company that does not manufacture a single integrated circuit.

For Pakistan, the fabless approach — designing chips and outsourcing manufacturing to third parties rather than building costly factories — could open the door to technological and economic transformation. But where should the country begin, and what has been achieved so far? The Express Tribune visited FAST-NUCES Integrated Circuits Design (ICD) Lab in Islamabad, the nation’s first IC design and training centre, to find out.

A humble start

The bright corridors of the ICD Lab are lined with research posters and prototypes, vividly showcasing the professional journey of Dr Rashad Ramzan and his team.

A graduate of UET Lahore, Dr Rashad’s chip design work began in the VLSI labs at Ohio State University. His academic path continued with an MSc in Electronics Engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, in 2003, and a subsequent doctorate from Linköping University. He has worked in the industry and academia related to chip design for over 25 years, in Pakistan, Sweden, Germany, the USA, and other international locations.

In 2018, he returned to Pakistan and joined FAST-NU, where he began teaching microelectronics, RF circuits, electromagnetics, and PCB design — initially to just ten MSc students, from a single room.

“We only had one room in