Betting big on Indian R&D when chips are down
A demand slump in the global semiconductor industry notwithstanding, Indian R&D centres of global chip majors are playing crucial role in designing products for global rollouts.
By Chiranjoy Sen, ET Bureau |
BANGALORE: A demand slump in the global semiconductor industry notwithstanding, Indian R&D centres of global chip majors are playing crucial role in designing products for global rollouts. Over the past few months, Indian centres have seen greater proportion of value-added semiconductor design being carried out while in some cases, the captives have handled end-to-end product design.
The value-addition tops India���s growing reputation as a chip design back-end even thought the country is yet to boast of a major fab or manufacturing unit. LSI Corporation India���s MD and veep, Pravin Desale, explains it succinctly: ���The complexity of designs and platforms developed in MNC captives have grown. Earlier, most of them were leveraged to provide point activities: Few parts of the workflow and not end-toend delivery. Gradually, the value chain has expanded from product specification and architecture to integration at customer site and pre and post-sales support.���
Industry watchers say while design centres have gained in expertise to move up the value chain, a greater focus on local markets/emerging geographies is also fuelling development of global-level products. Since at a future date, a ready locally-designed product can always expedite go-to-market strategy.
Echoes Sanjiv Keskar, country manager-sales , FreeScale Semiconductor, ���We are noticing a paradigm shift wherein the products designed in India are serving the global market. This is limited at the moment but is likely to grow.��� FreeScale���s MCF52xx microcontroller catering to rising demand for larger memory and more connectivity, was one whose design was owned and executed fully from the India design centre.
AMD���s corporate vice-president of central engineering, Jeff VerHeul, says: ���As part of our globalised strategy, the India R&D centre has been collaborating with other centres for latest cutting edge products. AMD���s first 45nanometre procesor , Shanghai, is a result of a closely coordinated effort between India and the US ��� a reflection of the strategic role that India plays in global design activities.���
AMD started its hardware design team in Hyderabad in mid-2008 following an acquisition and it now accounts for almost 50-60 % of the physical design work for the firm including high-end graphic design.
To boot, Intel���s India centre has designed the global major���s first six-core x86 microprocessor, the Xeon 7400 series . The team had planned and executed end-to-end design including front-end design, pre-silicon logic validation and back-end design. Sources say this was the first time a microprocessor was created in a design laboratory in India but an e-mail questionnaire to Intel remained unanswered.
Engineers at Analog Device���s India product development centre work on highperformance analog design, embedded software development , among other things and are involved in all stages of integrated circuit development from ���concept to silicon to production���.
���The India centre is the home of the SHARC family of processor products, used in home and automotive audio systems . Engineers here work closely with the global team to develop high performance signal processing products for worldwide markets,��� says S Karthik, engineering director of ADI���s India centre.
Concludes Biswadip Mitra, MD, TI India , which has had a research centre in Bangalore since 1985: ���The TI analog front end semiconductor devices (AFE) is a chip family whose development was largely carried out by engineers in TI India . Today, there is hardly any TI chip that is not touched by engineers at TI India.���
The value-addition tops India���s growing reputation as a chip design back-end even thought the country is yet to boast of a major fab or manufacturing unit. LSI Corporation India���s MD and veep, Pravin Desale, explains it succinctly: ���The complexity of designs and platforms developed in MNC captives have grown. Earlier, most of them were leveraged to provide point activities: Few parts of the workflow and not end-toend delivery. Gradually, the value chain has expanded from product specification and architecture to integration at customer site and pre and post-sales support.���
Industry watchers say while design centres have gained in expertise to move up the value chain, a greater focus on local markets/emerging geographies is also fuelling development of global-level products. Since at a future date, a ready locally-designed product can always expedite go-to-market strategy.
Echoes Sanjiv Keskar, country manager-sales , FreeScale Semiconductor, ���We are noticing a paradigm shift wherein the products designed in India are serving the global market. This is limited at the moment but is likely to grow.��� FreeScale���s MCF52xx microcontroller catering to rising demand for larger memory and more connectivity, was one whose design was owned and executed fully from the India design centre.
AMD���s corporate vice-president of central engineering, Jeff VerHeul, says: ���As part of our globalised strategy, the India R&D centre has been collaborating with other centres for latest cutting edge products. AMD���s first 45nanometre procesor , Shanghai, is a result of a closely coordinated effort between India and the US ��� a reflection of the strategic role that India plays in global design activities.���
AMD started its hardware design team in Hyderabad in mid-2008 following an acquisition and it now accounts for almost 50-60 % of the physical design work for the firm including high-end graphic design.
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To boot, Intel���s India centre has designed the global major���s first six-core x86 microprocessor, the Xeon 7400 series . The team had planned and executed end-to-end design including front-end design, pre-silicon logic validation and back-end design. Sources say this was the first time a microprocessor was created in a design laboratory in India but an e-mail questionnaire to Intel remained unanswered.
Engineers at Analog Device���s India product development centre work on highperformance analog design, embedded software development , among other things and are involved in all stages of integrated circuit development from ���concept to silicon to production���.
���The India centre is the home of the SHARC family of processor products, used in home and automotive audio systems . Engineers here work closely with the global team to develop high performance signal processing products for worldwide markets,��� says S Karthik, engineering director of ADI���s India centre.
Concludes Biswadip Mitra, MD, TI India , which has had a research centre in Bangalore since 1985: ���The TI analog front end semiconductor devices (AFE) is a chip family whose development was largely carried out by engineers in TI India . Today, there is hardly any TI chip that is not touched by engineers at TI India.���
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