Freescale to hike R&D

NEW DELHI: The $6.4-billion US-based chip maker Freescale Semiconductor will increase its chip design work in India but has no plans to set up a chip manufacturing unit here. This despite the incentives offered by the government in its recent semiconductor policy. “The policy addresses the finance side but does not address the infrastructure and logistics needed to set up a fab unit. We will not be setting up a fab here,’’ said Freescale Semiconductor chairman and CEO Michel Mayer.

India is the company’s largest design centre in the world outside the US. Freescale will increase the India design team by 1,500 in the next two years to have a total headcount of 2,500.

Freescale is betting big on cutting edge design work out of India with a focus on designing chips for automobile, mobile communications and networking infrastructure. “We are investing in R&D in India and will be doing innovative chip design here. For example for the optical networks that will be deployed by BSNL with Alcatel Lucent, a chip called GPON is being used. It is a world-class chip developed by Freescale and Alcatel in Noida. The chip in MotoRazar was developed by Freescale in India. The team in India already has 33 patents to its credit,’’ Mr Mayer said.

The company sees a huge potential in automobiles. On chips for cars Mr Mayer said: “By 2010 cars will have more code than Microsoft’s latest OS Vista. Cars will have software with over 40 million lines of code.’’ Automobile applications will span intelligent air bag deployment systems, engine control chips, automatic seat adjustment, power train applications and so on.

The company is also developing a low cost GSM base station for deployment of cellular networks in rural areas. Other areas of R&D out of India include chips for improved home networking and 4G cellular networks. When asked about chip applications of the future Mr Mayer said: “System on one chip will enable smaller, powerful devices with longer battery lives. You will see more and more autonomous car applications and devices that enable real time testing of blood via implantable devices.’’