Women power, RVCE rule at first annual Karnataka VLSI and embedded systems awards

RVCE, E&C, the winners!

It is always a pleasure to witness women power in technology! More especially, in India!! To my pleasant surprise, and am sure, of many others present, women power was aplenty at the first annual Karnataka VLSI and Embedded Systems Awards distribution ceremony held today at the RV-VLSI Design Center, Bangalore.

First, the winners! Congratulations to each one of them on their achievement!

VLSI category
Winner: Suraj H, Vinay R, Vinaya Ajjampura and Vasudev Pai M, RVCE, E&C.
Title: Design and verification of 16-bit pipelined microcontroller.

Runner-up: Deepika, Deepthi MN, Divya V Nayak, RVCE, Telecom — an all-women team!
Title: Design and verification of stand-alone DMA controller.

Embedded category
Winner: Praseed Chandriki, Prashant Bhat, Anup Reddy, Manoranjan S, RVCE, E&C.
Title: Implementtion of media transport in VoIP and performance analysis through measurement of QoS.

Runner-up: Ashwini HV, Sayak Bhowmick, Shruthi BR, Shruti S. Rao, Global Academy of Technology, E&C.
Title: DARAM driver for VoIP router.

It was announced that Mentor Graphics, along with STMicroelectronics, will be sponsoring next year’s awards.

Dignitaries at the first annual Karnataka VLSI and embedded systems awards.

This year’s contest was initiated by RV-VLSI in close association with VTU, and sponsored by Mentor Graphics. Dr. Walden C. Rhines, CEO and chairman, Mentor Graphics, graced the occassion. Dr. V.S. Acharya, the Honorable minister for Higher Education, Planning and Statistics, Government of Karnataka, who could not make it to the event owing to pressing official work, had his message read out.

Other digitaries present on the occasion included Hanns Windele, VP Mentor Graphics (Europe & India), Ian Burgess, Higher Education Program, Mentor Graphics, CV Hayagriv, Trustee, Rashtreeya Sikshana Samiti Trust, and chairman, governing council, RV-VLSI Design Center, AVS Murthy, honarary secretary, Rashtreeya Sikshana Samiti Trust, and Dr. MK Panduranga Setty, president, Rashtreeya Sikshana Samiti Trust (RSST).

RV-VLSI can tape-out multi-billion transistor chip today!
Venkatesh Prasad, CEO, RV-VLSI Design Center, said it was his interaction with a visionary like Dr. MK Panduranga Setty, and the support of the board of trustees of RSST that made it easy for him to transition out of the industry and start RV-VLSI. The vision of RV-VLSI is to create a steady stream of well trained professionals with a low TTP (time to be productive). To achieve a low TTP, it had to do things different from a traditional academic institution.

That differentiation started with the name, RV-VLSI Design Center itself, rather than RVDI. Next, the institute procured a Sun data center to meets its complex needs. Next, it gained access to foundry technology from Tower Semiconductor and EDA software from Mentor Graphics. Prasad added, ‘RV-VLSI has the infrastructure to design and tape-out a multi-billion transistor chip today.”

Is enough being done for Indian industry-academia collaboration in VLSI education?

Do you, as a semiconductor/VLSI/EDA company, run university or educational programs for colleges and institutes? Am sure, you do!

Well, are you providing these various colleges and institutes with the latest tools and EDA software? Perhaps, yes! So, do you regularly check whether your tool is being used properly, or at all? What do you do if the tool remains unopened or unused? Okay, before all of that, are you even guiding the faculty and students to tackle real world problems associated with chip design?

Do the students (and the faculty) know the intricacies of 22nm, 32nm, 45nm, and so on? Are you able to assist students in taping out? Right, is the syllabus taught in all of these colleges good enough to produce the kind of talent and skills that the semiconductor/VLSI industry requires currently, and in the future? Is everything being taught, the latest?

As they say — it takes two to tango… and, it takes two hands to clap! To the Indian academia — how many among you are “really” serious about being trained on a regular basis by the semicon/VLSI/EDA industry? What have you all done about it so far, all of these years? How many colleges and institutes among you (and do you) regularly put up or raise your hand to the industry and say — we lack the knowledge in a particular area and need training – please help us!

The question is: what are you, as a semicon/VLSI/EDA company, doing about training the various faculty and the students in various colleges and institutions across India? Do you have a proper program in place for this activity? Well, is enough being done regarding the industry-academia collaboration in VLSI education in India? What more needs to be done?

Are you, as a college or institute teaching VLSI, happy with the quality of talent coming out? Are you really satisfied with the quality of B.Tech/M.Tech projects? Do you seek industry’s help regarding training on a regular basis? What steps do you take to reach out to them? And, what are you doing about it all? Do you take that initiative seriously?

For that matter, are there easy-to-use systems that enable effective and industry-relevant education? Are those being made use of properly? Can entry barriers be lowered for students and faculty so they can explore an IP idea that has business potential? How many of the colleges have done this? I know of some folks trying to develop such solutions, but that’s a separate story for another day!

Coming back on track, apparently, some semicon companies and few well known Indian institutes are really exceeding themselves, but the same story does not hold true everywhere. Why is it so?

There could be a variety of reasons, and not all are listed here. Is it a lack of initiative on part of the industry and the institutes? Don’t they even talk to each other? Are institutes not able to approach semicon companies and vice versa? Or, is it the locations of the institutes themselves? Is it that not all institutes are concerned about teaching their students how to solve real world chip design problems?

An industry friend had once remarked: As of the last three-four years, students from the Eastern part of India have no clear pathway that they can pursue to get into VLSI design. The reasons are — there are no training institutes in the East, which can teach Synopsys or Cadence tools or even the basics of Xilinx FPGA design.

A very interesting panel discussion titled Forging win-win industry-academia collaboration in VLSI education was held during the Cadence CDNLive India University conference.

Moderated by Dr. C.P. Ravikumar, technical director, University Relations, TI India, the panelists were Dr Ajit Kumar Panda from NIST Behrampur, K Krishna Moorthy, MD, National Semiconductor India, Dr K. Radhakrishna Rao, head, analog training, TI. India and R. Parthasarathy, MD, CADD Centre.

I have already covered Dr. Ravikumar’s remarks separately.

Let’s see what the other panelists have to say about all of this, and whether they have answers to all of the questions or problems. Well, this is another long post, so please bear with me! 😉

Forging win-win industry-academia collaboration in VLSI education

Despite all the talk of semicon/VLSI going around in India, is the correct curriculum really being taught in the various institutes? Is the academia able to prepare students to be better equipped to tackle today’s world’s problems? Does the student have sufficient skills that the Indian (and global) semicon industry recruiters are looking for? Is the student, and the academia semiconductor-industry ready sufficiently?

Panel discussion on industry-academia collaboration in VLSI education.

There was a lively panel discussion titled: Forging win-win industry-academia collaboration in VLSI education during the post lunch session of CDNLive India University conference.

I remember last year’s CDNLive India panel discussion quite clearly! There was an entertaining session on how to prepare the students to be semiconductor industry read. It remains a top read till date!

This year’s panel discussion was moderated by Dr. C.P. Ravikumar, technical director, University Relations, Texas Instruments India.

The panelists were:
* Prof Ajit Kumar Panda, NIST Behrampur, Orissa.
* K Krishna Moorthy, MD, National Semiconductor India
* Dr K. Radhakrishna Rao, head, analog training, TI.
* R. Parthasarathy, managing director, CADD Centre.

Starting the discussion, Dr. Ravikumar said that the semicon industry is currently seeing fast paced growth. New knowledge is getting added every year. The semicon industry has been present in India for over 25 years now, and counting.

There is a varied expectations from the academia in India. For instance, should they teach fundamentals or skills? Do they have silicon experience, or can the institute bring this about on its own? What is important — going up or down the abstraction level?

Or, should VLSI education be introduced at the graduate level or should it be in the Masters leel? There are several gaps in the curriculum itself. What can the industry do about those gaps?

Dr. Ravikumar said: “TI is celebrating 25 years. The kinds of problems TI is working on today are vastly different from the times when it had started in India. Today, it is doing large SoCs. The industry has hige expectations from the academia.

People, he added. seem to have diverse opinion on VLSI. Even at abstraction levels, we can talk about power, circuit design, larger blocks, etc. You will likely hear different sort of viewpoints depending on who you are talking to.

He said: “A lot of effort is being put into the formation of new M Tech programs in VLSI across various institutes. Wheher the students passing out from these institutes will find employment in the Indian semiconductor industry- is also a point of debate. Again, I’ve seen VLSI being talked about in the graduate level as well.”

Since there were four panelists, I shall add their views in a separate post. Stay tuned, folks! 😉

India's teaching community contemplates SoC design

The VLSI Society of India recently organized a two-day faculty development workshop on SoC design, — Train-the-Trainer program — on Oct. 30-31, 2010, at the Texas Instruments India office, in co-operation with PragaTI (TI India Technical University) and Visweswaraya Technological University (VTU).

Dr. C.P. Ravikumar, TI, addressing the teachers at the workshop on SoC design.

I am highly obliged and very grateful to the VLSI Society of India and Dr. C.P. Ravikumar, technical director, University Relations, Texas Instruments India, for extending an invitation. Here is a report on the workshop, which the VSI Secretariat and Dr. Ravikumar have been most kind to share.

System-on-chip (SoC) refers to the technological revolution, which allows semiconductor manufacturers to integrate electronic systems on the same chip. System-on-board, which has been the conventional implementation of electronic systems, uses semiconductor chips soldered onto printed circuit boards (PCBs) to realize system functionality.

Systems typically include sensors, analog frontend, digital processors, memories and peripherals. Thanks to the advances in VLSI technology, these sub-systems can be integrated on the same chip, reducing the footprint, cutting down the cost, improving the performance and power efficiency.

While the industry has adopted SoC design for many years, the academic community around the world (India not being an exception) has not caught up with the state-of-the-art. Electrical/electronics engineering departments continue to teach a course on VLSI design, where the level of design abstraction is device-level, transistor-level, or gate-level.

Register-transfer-level (RTL) design using hardware description languages is taught in some Masters’ programs, but colleges often do not have the lab infrastructure to carry out large design projects; very few Indian universities have tie-ups with foundry services to get samples. A semester is too short a time to complete a large project.

The complexity of modern-day design flow is not easy to impart in a single undergraduate course. Masters’ programs are particularly relevant in VLSI, but the M.Tech programs in the country languish due to several reasons.

Ground realities
“M.Tech programs do not attract top students who are highly motivated,” said a professor who attended the two-day faculty development program organized by VLSI Society of India. “Almost all undergraduate programs today have a course on VLSI technology and design. But since we get students from different backgrounds, they do not have the pre-requisites. So, a course on VLSI design at M.Tech level will have a significant overlap with an undergraduate course on VLSI design.”

“Faculty members need training,” said another teacher. “When a new course is introduced, significant time is needed for preparation.  Prescribed textbooks for a new course are often not available. Internet search for course materials often returns too much material and it is hard to decide what to use. Colleges that have autonomy can decide their own curriculum, but in a university setup, the faculty face a major challenge. We are evaluated on how well our students fare in the exams. Yet, our students have to face an exam made by a central committee.”

“Having a common exam poses many problems in setting up a relevant question paper. The format of the question paper is fixed. The students get a choice of answering five questions from a set of eight. Due to the common nature of the question paper, the questions tend to demand descriptive answers.”

Faculty development workshop on SoC design
About 30 faculty members interested in system-on-chip design took part in the faculty development workshop. The attendees came from about 25 different colleges from VTU, VIT University, and Anna University. The workshop was conducted in co-operation with the Viswesaraya Technological University (VTU) and sponsored by Texas Instruments, India.

The premise for the workshop was that a course on SoC design is required at the Masters’ level, since industrial practice has clearly moved in that direction. The RTL-to-layout flow, which continues to be relevant for IPs that constitute an SoC, aspects of SoC design, which relies on IP integration, are not covered in any course.

The workshop provided a forum for industry-academia interaction. Several professionals from the industry took part in the workshop and answered questions from the faculty members. 

Some thoughts on VLSI manufacturing in India

This particular post is an extension of the previous one. Here, Rajat Gupta, MD, Beceem Communications, shares some thoughts on what can be done in India for VLSI manufacturing. So, rather than these thoughts getting lost in the blog, it deserves an individual post.

VLSI manufacturing: The government of India has to give appropriate incentives to this industry and suitably phase these to allow an ecosystem to build up. The fabless model is fine for companies to transact their business. But, India needs to have this technology or some semblance of it to start with or else it would never be able to count herself amongst the leading nations of the world. How can we achieve that?

a) One of the quickest ways to get started is to create an organization (with equity wholly or partly owned by the government of India) with the charter that that company invest in/fractionally own some of the leading semiconductor manufacturing facilities in Taiwan. TSMC may be very difficult to own even modest percentages, but simultaneously buying reasonable stakes in UMC, Chartered Semiconductor, the IBM multi-platform consortium may be possible with (my guess) at under $1 billion that gives adequate leverage. This organization then makes available fab capacity (that is available to them now due to their fractional ownership) to fabless product companies with intended product sales in India.

b) Repeat the above for packaging, assembly, and VLSI test operations. (The challenges are less here though, but these are just as important elements of the ecosystem).

c) With this, India will “own” leading edge VLSI technology although in a circuitous manner, but given that we missed the boat by over 20 years I think this is a reasonably low cost but effective way to get a starting foothold.

d) Next, and in parallel, the government ought to give incentives to companies to create semiconductor manufacturing capacities on Indian soil but buying re-furbished and lower cost equipment at previous generation technology nodes.

Some policies are required here that allow easy transport back-and-forth of sub-assemblies for repair and replacement.

The business model here would be that the government provides land (to drive the concentration of such technology around three to four zones distributed across the country) but companies should be able to do this on their own should they so choose to. These companies in return bring in (a) captive manufacturing load (whether for sales in India or export, both are ok) and additional spare capacity (or, equivalently, a commitment to scale up with an incentive/penalty structure) to stimulate manufacturing by Indian fabless companies.

e) Eventually, the organization(s) in (d) above will “catch” up with those in (a) above. There will need to be phased modification of the incentives, reducing some, changing some such that over a six-seven year period all incentives can go away and the eco-system will be self sustaining.

f) Well, not quite, we will also need to address (i) the semiconductor manufacturing, assembly, test equipment manufacturing and (ii) the semiconductor manufacturing raw materials (silicon wafers, silicon grade pure chemicals, etc etc). The focus to these technologies have to be phased to the decade after the steps outlined in (a) to (d) have yielded some measurable results.

Friends, please feel free to share your thoughts, comments, etc., and add value.

VLSI/embedded systems design contest rolls out at RV-VLSI Design Center

The RV VLSI Design Center, Bangalore, and Mentor Graphics have jointly started a new initiative on BE projects and design contests as part of the education initiative in India. The first ever inter-collegiate design contest in VLSI/embedded systems was inaugurated today by Dr. H.P. Khincha, Vice Chancellor, Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), at the RV VLSI Design Center, an RV Academic Research Institution.

India's first ever inter-collegiate design contest in VLSI/embedded systems was inaugurated today at the RV-VLSI Design Center, Bangalore.

The RV-VLSI, with the support of VTU and industry academia alliance partners such as Mentor Graphics, has constituted this design contest. It is open to all colleges under the VTU.

A set of projects of relevance to the industry has been identified by RV-VLSI and VTU. Students have to choose a project based on personal interest and guidance from their college guides. RV-VLSI offers pre project training to these students and will subsequently guide them in the execution of the project at the center.

Venkatesh Prasad, CEO, RV-VLSI Design Center, said that 133 students from nine colleges have registered for projects. To ensure that students have necessary skills required to execute the projects efficiently, each student will undergo an intense 100 hours pre-project training at the center. After its completion, the students will regroup into their respective teams and start the execution of the project under the guidance of the RV-VLSI faculty.

Opportunity for budding entrepreneurs
Anil Gupta, member – Executive Council, India Semiconductor Association (ISA), said that India could have a potential of consuming $300-$400 million in electronics by 2020, from the current consumption of about $40-$45 billion. Only 3 percent of this $40 billion is currently being made in India. “The opportunity is in front of us to grab,” he said. “So far, we have done a terrible job of making use of this opportunity.”

Encouraging students to also focus on enterpreneurship, he advised them of the great opportunity and challenge ahead of us to see how much we (India) can contribute toward this $400 billion opportunity. We would also need to learn to compete with the Samsungs, Toshibas, iPhones, etc. He mentioned the ISA Technovation Awards 2010, which witnessed a number of Indian start-ups demostrating their products.

VLSID 2010 to focus on affordable technologies for emerging markets

The 23rd International Conference on VLSI Design and the 9th International Conference on Embedded Systems (VLSID 2010) will be held at the NIMHANS Convention Center in Bangalore from January 3 to 7, 2010.

Over 700 delegates from India and abroad are likely to participate in this premier VLSI conference.  It provides a forum for researchers and designers to present and discuss various aspects of VLSI design, electronic design automation (EDA), enabling technologies and embedded systems.

The first two days of the conference will feature full day tutorials by worldwide experts and the main technical program of the conference will be held on the following three days.

Dr. Biswadip (Bobby) Mitra, President & Managing Director, Texas Instruments India will inaugurate the conference on January 5, 2010.

Dr. Mahesh Mehendale, General Co-Chair VLSID 2010.

I was in conversation with Dr. Mahesh Mehendale, General Co-chair VLSID 2010 and Texas Instruments Fellow & Director, Center of Excellence for Digital Video, Texas Instruments India, and Dr. Srivaths Ravi, General Co-Chair VLSID 2010 and DFT Lead at Texas Instruments India.

According to Dr. Mehendale, this year’s conference has a theme “Affordable Technology for Emerging Markets”. The intent is to focus on what it takes to build low-cost chips and systems for emerging markets and applications. Some of the sessions revolve around this theme.

He added: “We are also looking at technology trends such as CMOS scaling; challenges in 22nm and beyond; what’s beyond CMOS scaling – 3D ICs, new materials, new structures etc. Another trend is system level integration, which is heterogeneous in nature — for instance, MEMS, wireless sensor networks, micro-fluidics, etc., are among the other topics being covered.

“We have several eminent keynote speakers this year. To name some of them, we have the father of Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) — Dr. Larry J Hornbeck, Texas Instruments Fellow and inventor, the chip that became the basis for Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology, visiting us this year. He will talk about DMD and DLP. Dr. Walden C Rhines, Chairman & CEO, Mentor Graphics, is another keynote speaker. He will be speaking on ‘Delivering 10X Design Improvements’.”

The complexity of what we build on a device continues to go up. SoC is getting redefined from system-on-a- chip to systems-on-a-chip and software-on-a-chip, he added. Hence, the embedded system focus of the conference. These systems target specific applications, so there will be talks covering some of these important application domains, such as an embedded tutorial on HD video architecture. The event hosts a talk on telemedicine by Sham Banerji of i2i TeleSolutions as part of the theme session on Wednesday, January 6.

In terms of coverage, across keynotes, theme sessions, panel and embedded tutorials, the conference has a very high profile program.

On January 3-4, there will be mainly tutorials on these two days. The topics will cover the various aspects of VLSI design. It will also look at testing as an important component.

This year, for the first time, the organizers of the VLSID 2010 conference will be webcasting the entire conference live! That’s great news!

Dr. Mehendale said:  “We are taking the conference to the desktops of the professionals and people who may not be able to attend in person! On days 3, 4, 5 (i.e., the main conference program), we will be webcasting three of the four sessions. We are considering recording the fourth session and make it available for relay later.

“The main conference program will have four parallel tracks. The keynotes will run as plenary and will cut across all tracks. On the first two days of the technical program, in addition to three paper presentation tracks, we will have industry forums on January 5 and January 6, where we have invited technical experts from the industry to present on focus areas.  We are excited about the quality of the technology programs that we are bringing in.”

What the semiconductor industry should do in 2009!

What should the global semiconductor companies do to combat the current downturn? Is the lack of exit options in semiconductors really stunting innovation, especially in EDA? Is the Indian semiconductor industry really mature enough to enable product development? Do we have an ecosystem that encourages product development?

These are just some of the questions buzzing in my mind, and within the industry. While there is maybe an answer to the first one, and maybe no ready answer for the second one, I would probably agree with what Dr. H.V. Ananda former managing director of Synplicity said to me in August 2007, that the Indian ecosystem will not enable faster product development cycles!

At least, I haven’t seen any good or great Indian company or startup from India in the recent years to accept that we have learned the art of developing products! I am still waiting and sincerely wish that this situation changes very soon!

I recently got into a discussion with Abhi Talwalkar, the President & CEO, LSI Corp., post the 22nd international conference on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) design and the 8th international conference on Embedded Systems in New Delhi, India, and quizzed him about LSI’s thoughts on these and much more.

Three things to do for semicon firms
First up, what should the global semiconductor industry do in 2009? If there are three key things for semiconductor companies to do in this downturn, what would those be?

According to the LSI president, semiconductor companies should carefully manage their expenses and conserve cash. They should also develop conservative financial plans, which in turn will help them stabilize their balance sheets.

“Companies with strong financial capabilities and strong balance sheet will look to become stronger through this downturn. They should try to accelerate their market share through innovative practices.

“This should also be an opportunity for all companies to get closer to the customers, focus on their strategies and collaborate with them to help them come out stronger through this recession. Agility to innovate and meet with the customer requirements will help companies in developing a clearer focus on R &D and stronger executions,” he said.

Does India have a product development ecosystem?
I still don’t quite believe that India boasts a product development ecosystem, and am waiting for this to happen! On being asked this question, Talwalkar said that a product development ecosystem is dependent on the maturity of the end markets.

He added: “The Indian market is growing and will continue to grow both in terms of consumer and enterprise demand. This growth in demand will enhance the product development ecosystem as it will rationalize the cost of development. India still needs to fill in a lot of gaps to have a stronger product development ecosystem within semiconductor marketplace.”

Continuing in the same vein, why haven’t more startups happened in India, especially in semiconductors, especially in the recent years?

Referring to the ecosystem angle, Abhi Talwalkar noted that the success of startups is dependent on the existing ecosystem. “The growth of end markets will continue to encourage local ecosystem, especially in regards to native systems companies in areas of semiconductors. Currently, the system development is in its infancy in India, and with the growth of system MNC in India, it will grow.

The third point I had was: Is the lack of exit options in semiconductors really stunting innovation, especially in EDA? As I said, this is a very tricky one, and well, there has really been no answer to this one, as yet. Maybe, the answers will come in and be clearer as the year goes on!

The global semiconductor industry has had several headlines related to job cuts in the recent months. All of these layoffs have made me wonder whether there is going to be a drop in R&D, globally, due to the recession! If not, then why all of these layoffs? This is a point I’ve raised earlier!

Talwalkar said: “There will be drop in R&D with reduction in the top lines across the industry. There will be reduction in R&D budgets as companies will look to manage their expenses carefully as well as balance sheets.”

Outlook 2009: India and global
Coming down to 2009, what is LSI’s outlook for the Indian and global semiconductor industry?

Abhi Talwarkar said: “In the near term, the MNC India design centers will have to play significant roles. Their role is under appreciated and there are opportunities for them to grow further in the current economic scenario. The captive capability will grow as the cost structure and talent availability remains favorable here.

As for the global semiconductor industry, he added that the near term outlook will be challenging given the downturn and the rapid softening of product demand, especially in PCs, handsets, servers, consumer electronics, etc.

“In the long term, there will be positive growth in the semiconductor industry as the newer technologies get adopted in new product categories, — automotive, healthcare, solar, consumer electronics, telecommunication infrastructure, etc., as well as the continued growth of electronic products, especially in India, China, Eastern European and BRIC countries,” he added.

Several analysts have offered contrasting dates for an industry recovery. Even I am asked this question by several friends. My take is: do try and wait out this year, and consolidate, and try to continue to innovate, and prepare for the next industry upturn!

Perhaps, it is quite in line with what Malcolm Penn, chairman and CEO, Future Horizons, said recently, “Now, more than ever, is the time to work smarter not give up; the market will rebound, better start planning for that now!” Hope the industry is listening!

What India brings to the table for semicon world! And, for Japan

This semicon blog’s title has been inspired by some queries, largely from friends in Japan, who are looking at the Indian semiconductor market. The topic of great global (and Japanese) interest is: What does India bring to the table for the semicon world to go to India!

Interesting! The world has been keenly following the Indian semiconductor and fab policy, and can gather a lot of information off my blog itself! For those who’d like to know it all again in specifics, here we go again!

Indian semicon and fab policy
Around September last year, the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and IT, Government of India, came up with the Special Incentive Package Scheme (SIPS) to encourage investments for setting up semicon fabs, and other micro and nanotechnology manufacturing industries in India!

The “ecosystem units” have been clearly defined as units, other than a fab unit, for manufacture of semiconductors, displays, including LCDs, OLEDs, PDPs, any other emerging displays; storage devices; solar cells; photovoltaics; other advanced micro and nanotechnology products; and assembly and test of all the above products.

What has happened since?
Lots! Initially, there were two major proposals from HSMC and SemIndia for setting up wafer IC fabs. While those haven’t really taken off yet, more investments have since happened in India.

Quite recently, the Indian semiconductor and fab policy attracted 12 major proposals, worth a whopping Rs. 93,000 crores! The Department of Information Technology (DIT), Government of India, has set up a panel of technical experts to evaluate these proposals.

Ten (10) of these proposals are for solar/PV. One is for a semiconductor wafer — from Reliance Industries worth Rs. 18,521 crores, and another for TFT LCD flat panels — from Videocon Industries, worth Rs. 8,000 crores.

The 10 proposals for solar/PV are from: KSK Surya (Rs. 3,211 crores), Lanco Solar (Rs. 12,938 crores), PV Technologies India (Rs. 6,000 crores), Phoenix Solar India (Rs. 1,200 crores), Reliance Industries (Rs. 11,631 crores), Signet Solar Inc. (Rs. 9,672 crores), Solar Semiconductor (Rs. 11,821 crores), TF Solar Power (Rs. 2,348 crores), Tata BP Solar India (Rs. 1,692.80 crores), and Titan Energy System (Rs. 5,880.58 crores). This is as far the latest developments are concerned!

Solar fabs have also been announced earlier by leading firms such as Videocon, Reliance and Moser Baer, etc. (Two of them are figuring here again!) There are also talks about developing solar farms in India, which is good.

What are India’s strengths?
The clear strengths of the Indian semiconductor industry are embedded and design services! We are NOT YET into product development, but one sincerely hopes that it gathers pace.

The market drivers in India are mobile phone services, IT services/BPO, automobiles and IT hardware. India is also very strong in design tools, system architecture and VLSI design, has quite strong IP protection laws, and is reasonably strong in concept/innovation in semiconductors.

Testing and packaging are in a nascent stage. India will certainly have more of ATMP facilities. Nearly every single semicon giant has an India presence! That should indicate the amount of interest the outside world has on India. In fact, I am told, some key decisions are now made out of the Bangalore based outfits!

Electronics manufacturing
In the electronics manufacturing domain, India’s strength lies in hardware, embedded software and industrial design, OEMs, component distribution (includes semiconductor and box build), and end user/distribution channel, as well as more than moderate strength in product design and manufacturing (ODM, EMS).

India is likely to witness $363 billion of equipment consumption and $155 billion of domestic production by 2015. India’s electronic equipment consumption in 2005 was 1.8 percent. It is likely to grow to 5.5 percent in 2010 and 11 percent in 2015, as per a joint study conducted by the ISA and Frost & Sullivan.

The Indian semiconductor TAM (total available market) revenue is likely to grow by 2.5 times while the TM (total market) is likely to double revenues in 2009. The TAM is likely to grow at a CAGR of 35.8 percent and the TM is likely to grow at a CAGR of 26.7 percent, respectively, during the period 2006-09.

Telecom, and IT and office automation are the leading segments in TM and TAM. Consumer segment occupies the third fastest growing area in the TM, and the industrial segment is the third fastest growing area in the TAM.

The major semiconductor categories of interest include microprocessors, analog, memory, discretes and ASICs, while the major end use products include mobile handsets, BTS, desktops, notebooks, set-top boxes and CRT TVs.

India, the embedded superstar!
India’s embedded design industry has been going from strength to strength. An IDC-ISA report forecasts the revenues from India’s VLSI, board design and embedded software industry to grow to $10.96bn by 2010 from the current $6.08bn in 2007.

India is also focusing on moving up the semiconductor value chain. It is emphasizing on end-to-end product development, investing in IP development, developing India specific products, and partnering with OEMs to understand the market needs. Also, be aware that several leading EMS firms are present in India as well.

What should investors do?
Certainly, invest in India! The Indian semicon policy clearly defines the “ecosystem units.” Global manufacturers of displays, including LCDs, OLEDs, PDPs, any other emerging displays; storage devices; including SSDs, solar cells; photovoltaics; other advanced micro and nanotechnology products, should certainly look at investing in India, and consider manufacturing here!

Lots of solar fabs are likely to come up, so there will be a great demand for solar related equipment, chemicals, testing, etc. We hope that one wafer IC fab comes up as well, so there will be opportunity for semicon equipment manufacturers. However, do be prepared to wait as things may not move as fast as some may expect.

There is lot of opportunity for fabless companies and in ATMP as well. There are several Indian firms, small ones, who may be interested in partnering. Some trading companies may find India of interest, especially in the solar/PV and ATMP segments.

Keep an eye on the IT/semicon policies some states, especially, Karnataka have in store. A host of opportunities could become available, once Karnataka comes up with a policy. More states may follow suit!

Well, do contact me in case you need further assistance!

Now, UK seeks semicon ties with India!

Just a couple of days ago, I had touched upon the growing global interest in the Indian semiconductor industry. Well, late last evening, I was present at the release of an important study that seeks collaborations between semicon firms from India and the UK! Talk about interest!!

The India Semiconductor Association (ISA) and the UK Trade & Investment and Science & Innovation Network has launched a study titled “Scope for collaboration between India and the UK in semiconductor driven industry 2008”. The report was launched by Richard Hyde, head – British Trade Office, Bangalore and ISA chairman Jaswinder Ahuja.

Given India’s growing presence in the global semicon industry, the study comes at the right time. UK and Indian semiconductor firms can collaborate to boost India’s IP creation and build next-generation products. There are potential synergies between the two nations in areas such as design, applications and devices.

Indian semicon firms specialize in VLSI, hardware/board-level design and embedded systems in wireless communications, computing and networking. In turn, the UK’s strength lies in IP creation and complete product development.

Richard Hyde remarked that there was lot of compatibility between the UK and Indian semiconductor companies. The study also laid the foundation for the forthcoming Semi Conclave, scheduled for September 15-16 in Bangalore, to be followed by similar events in Hyderabad and New Delhi. “It will bring together the industry and the academia, along with a visiting delegation from the UK.” This event will be jointly organized by ISA, UKTI and SIN.

V. Ravichandar, CMD, Feedback Consulting said the first challenge while preparing the study was to find high-quality data. The ISA in India and the NMI in the UK had such data.

He added: “Firms that exist in India and the UK are essentially design firms. They become complementary as you collaborate.” He highlighted IP creation and product development as the strength of the UK firms, and computing, networking and communications as the strength of the Indian semiconductor firms.

The best fit — Indian universities and UK universities — can be leveraged in the short run. Commenting on clusters, while these were built around places such as Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and New Delhi in India, the UK has clusters in South-East England — in hardware design, Scotland, East England — software engineering, and a balance mix of companies in the South-West of England. India can provide skills in VLSI and EDA, as well as the large talent pool.

The next best fit lies in collaboration between the UK companies and the talent pool in India, which could go a long way in bringing down the research costs. Another fit could be between the companies in the UK and India, or the UK universities and Indian companies. However, the Indian companies might not be able to bring in the kind of funding required for high-end R&D as they are not mature enough.

Another fit could well be sharing of best practices, such as those brought by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and EUROPRACTICE.

“The Indian government also needs to come forward beyond the semicon policy.” Ravichandar added. “There is scope for 30-40 percent reduction in R&D expenses, should collaborations happen between semicon firms from the UK and India.”

Poornima Shenoy, president, ISA, added that the ISA had initiated a Country Series, focusing on specific geographies of relevance to the industry. The report with UKTI is the first in this series.