I listened to you, dear readers — presenting separate blogs on semiconductors and solar/PV

Ever since I started writing this blog, I’ve always managed to maintain my affinity toward semiconductors. Publishing and maintaining a semicon blog, especially out of India, is difficult and extremely challenging, and well, suitably rewarding.

Several readers, well wishers and friends suggested that I also start taking in press releases, besides writing my own content! Their logic — who else can do it better! Wow… I’m really overwhelmed!

So, as always, I have listened to my friends — my readers and well wishers — and bow to their request!

Separate blogs on semicon and solar PV
This is just to inform everyone — readers, friends and well wishers — that I’ve rolled out two separate blogs on semiconductors and solar photovoltaics (solar/PV).

1. PC’s Semiconductors Blog

2. PC’s Solar Photovoltaics Blog

These blogs have been spun out off this very blog, my award winning blog!

Let me make it clear that Pradeep Chakraborty’s Blog — which only has original content, barring a few odd posts, will remain unchanged in quality and nature! It will continue to carry top-quality, world class content! In fact, I will now have to work doubly hard, as I’ve to try and keep up with all of those press releases 🙂

For now, these two new blogs include specific blog posts related to either semiconductors or solar/PV from my award winning blog, and other specific blog posts, as well as press releases, industry updates, statistics, etc. I will also add new product announcements, mergers and acquisitions, etc., as and when those happen — on to both of these blogs.

I am very grateful to my friends for this wonderful suggestion. As and when I roll out my technology portal, I will be having a readymade platform — of articles and releases to fall back on, and to grow it even further.

I would have loved to announce a further three additional blogs on FPGAs, embedded design and EDA as well. That may happen at a later date. Oh yes, an extra one on chip design trends.

You know what? I have a tremendous liking for telecom — a major weakness, as well as electronic components, electronics and photonics. Maybe, blogs on these are also in order, well, hopefully, sometime soon!

Thanks for your kind support, dear friends, readers, well wishers and all of those who simply give me a wealth of advice, as always. Suggestions for improvements are always welcome! You all know where and how to reach me! 🙂

Rolled out Telecoms Blog
PS: Dated April 25th, 2009 — My friends, I have rolled out a Telecoms Blog after all! Couldn’t resist staying away from an industry, which has played such a big role in my development as a technology writer, journalist and blogger.

I look forward to your warm support, as always.

Rolled out Electronics Blog
Urgent PS: Dated April 26, 2009 — Friends, I have also rolled out a brand new Electronics Blog! This is the area where I first started off as a technology journalist, and later, bloomed, while I was at Global Sources (2005-2006).

I will also try and include as many products and suppliers from the Greater China region, and help you source quality electronics products.

Thanks and look forward to your support as always. 🙂

SemiconWorld — social networking site for semicon professionals

Friends, I have recently started a small social networking site — SemiconWorld (http://semiconworld.ning.com) — on Ning. SemiconWorld will aim to connect semiconductor and electronics professionals, and facilitate discussions on key business and other industry issues.

Ever since I started this blog, I have made several friends from all over the world! Most of them have gone on to have long discussions with me on semiconductors and electronics. So, when I looked around on the Internet, I found that there weren’t many social networking sites for semiconductor and electronics professionals. Hence, I thought of developing one.

Even as I have been developing this site, some good friends, such as Uma Mahesh Sir, Jo Kuo, Ms Poornima Shenoy of ISA, Sandip Dhawan, Alfred Cheng, Rahul Prabhakar, Ian Shelley, Priyanka Kalia, Kiran Kumar and Tiffany Yeh, have already joined the SemiconWorld network. A very warm thanks to all of you, folks!

It is always good to hear the perspectives and perceptions of others. That’s how I have tried to learn about the various technologies we read about all the time! And, I am still learning! It is my sincere hope and wish that my friends join me and we can have great and very useful discussions on various topics and issues related to these high-tech industries.

Why did I choose Ning for such a site? Well, I happen to be a member of the TelecomYou (www.telecomyou.com) network on Ning — a social networking site for telecom professionals. There, I found members participating in discussions and friendly chats, post blogs about various things, and even look for jobs! I don’t know how to add jobs to this site, but if someone can lead me to a site, which can allow me to post a job widget, I’d be glad to do so.

For those interested in events, Future Horizon’s International Electronics Forum (IEF) 2009, will be held from May 6 to May 8, 2009, in Geneva, Switzerland. I’ve added a link to event, in case you wish to look that up.

I have also provided several key industry links for those keen on looking up information related to semiconductors, electronics and technologies. I can add a whole lot of stuff on to this page. Maybe, all that will happen over a period of time. Till then, enjoy networking, dear friends! Hope you like SemiconWorld!

ISA Vision Summit 2009: Indian design influence, ideas to volume

This post is slightly delayed given the fact that I’ve been travelling! Here it is: Session 2 of Day 1, ISA Vision Summit 2009!!

The still quite young, Indian semiconductor industry has come a long way! Making his opening remarks during the session: Indian Design Influence, Ideas to Volume, Jaswinder Ahuja, Corporate Vice President & MD, Cadence Design Systems India, and chairman, pointed out that earlier, it used to be ‘made by the world, FOR India.’ However, globalization of design has now put India on the world semiconductor map. Today, it is ‘made by the world, IN India.’

The picture here shows Ahuja making a point, while Freescale’s Ganesh Guruswamy, TI’s Dr. Bobby Mitra and Intel’s Praveen Vishakantaiah are all attention.

The electronics systems production is clearly moving eastward. Even though the chip fabs may not happen in India, systems manufacturing is certainly happening. The emerging markets today offer a $5 trillion opportunity. However, the transformative challenge is: how to marry low cost, good quality, sustainability and profitability simultaneously!

Fantastic opportunity for investing in technology
Praveen Vishakantaiah, President, Intel, added that India has a fantastic opportunity ahead for investing in technology. He cited Intel’s examples, such as: products designed in India for global market — Intel Xeon 7400 processor; designed in India for India and emerging markets — Classmate PC, which was prototyped in India; and designed in India and customized for the local market — PoS retail kiosk solution.

Internal factors related to volume development include: unique market needs, designing for reliability, enabling customers — standard globally but varied in India. External factors include: access to customers — which can be challenging in a varied market such as India, access to employable talent, predictable supply chain, robust infrastructure — digital infrastructure should scale simultaneously with design and development, and proactive policies and regulations.

According to Vishakantaiah, there is a need for a call to action and seize opportunities. This means, capitalizing on opportunities for local and global product designs, increase the impact and build end-to-end competencies, and to continue to move up the value chain. There is a need to address the internal factors. This would enable increasing the quality of products and extend local products into global markets. There is also a need to focus on the enabling the local market for global product companies.

As far as the external factors are concerned, there is a need to be proactive to remove barriers. There is a need to also encourage research, faculty development and new curriculum. India also needs to build energy efficient power, logistics and manufacturing capabilities, and also reduce e-waste and think green for all product designs.

Downturn creates huge opportunities
Ganesh Guruswamy, Director and Country Manager, Freescale Semiconductor India, remarked that even the deepest downturns can create huge opportunities for companies and countries. “Continuing to innovate during the downturn is important,” he added. It is therefore, time for India to step up, put the right innovations in place and grow.

He stressed upon several custom solutions for emerging markets, such as two-wheelers, which dominate, e-bikes, which are said to be the future, LED lamps, power inverters, irrigation pumpset powered by solar, smart energy meters, and solar/PV base station and carrier based equipment for telecom.

Medical tourism is an emerging focus area for India, as it is growing by 30 percent each year. Medical tourism is likely to bring $1-2 billion to India by 2012. In this context, Guruswamy highlighted Freescale’s ECG-on-a-chip solution. According to him, the way forward would involve moving away from a design mindset to a product mindset!

Don’t be dwarfed by glamorous industries!
Dr Bobby Mitra, MD, Texas Instruments India, said that India is witnessing a change in its semiconductors agenda — from R&D to R&D + market growth. If followed properly, it can become a game changing agenda. “India has nearly 2,000 OEMs designing electronics products. That’s the untapped potential,” he said.

Most of the customers are smaller companies — the proverbial long tail. They know semiconductors and electronics very well. Such companies need to be measured by the firebrand innovation going on at those places.

Dr. Mitra said: “The products have to be the right kind of products. If they are complex, it is incidental.” He cited defense and aerospace as very strong spaces, while industrial is also an equally strong opportunity area. “We should not be dwarfed by glamorous industries,” he cautioned.

In the near term, the Indian semiconductor industry needs to develop two new stripes. These are: a high degree of customer centricity so it can be brought into the R&D engineer’s minds, and have an application mindset — India is very good in design work; it now needs to develop applications in the current context.

Dr. Mitra also called upon having research as an agenda for the industry. This can be done in areas that would assume importance in future. “By working with customers, we can make products more intelligent, by adding electronics and semiconductors,” he advised. “All of us have a key role to play in this transformation.”

SMEs, in particular, have a major role to play. Intel’s Vishakantaiah said that MNCs would need to mentor and coach such companies. Freescale’s Guruswamy added that MNCs can either help them grow or buy them out.

Dr. Mitra advised that even if customers didn’t provide business, it would pay to remain close to them. He also referred to TI’s Beagle Board, an open and low-cost platform, which enables development of applications. However, he advised the industry to be realistic about mass customization.

FPGAs have adopted Moore's Law more closely!

How true! Field programmable gate arrays or FPGAs have become faster, denser and more complex over the years!

Speaking at the recently held Altera SOPC conference, S. Janakiraman, President and CEO-R&D Services, MindTree, and former chairman, India Semiconductor Association (ISA), said these had found acceptance in a wide range of market segments. “FPGAs are everywhere, be it telecom or industrial or medical,” he added.

Once relegated to simple glue logic design, FPGAs are challenging SoCs today. The million-gate FPGAs are, in fact, quite common. What’s more, ASSP like features, for example, PCI Express, USB, etc., have also found their way into FPGAs.

FPGAs have adopted Moore’s Law more closely than any other device technology! They even ‘help’ in ‘ratifying’ new process nodes.

Janakiraman said: “With the ever increasing costs of designs and declining ASIC starts, FPGAs offer a considerably less riskier approach, development costs, tools and testing – even at latest technology nodes.”

So what would be the factors driving change? These are multiple, and actually split into cost, performance, time-to-market and also field-upgradeable hardware.

From the cost aspect, functions in a system with standard ICs are performed by dedicated discrete components on a PCB. The FPGA route can reduce routing congestion and lower costs by enabling the use of smaller boards with less layers and lower component count.

Next comes performance, and a key factor in accelerating performance is parallel implementation. Here too the FPGA can be easily programmed to handle the same sequential instruction set by leveraging multiple micro-CPUs, connected by very wide internal buses.

Time-to-market has obviously become critical with the consumerization of electronics. As a result, the FPGAs are increasingly entering this segment because of the obvious advantages of early product introductions.

As for the field upgradeable hardware, Janakiraman elucidated an example: configuring video capture card for Europe (PAL), NA (NTSC), JAPAN (SECAM), need one hardware configuration with an FPGA on it. Depending on the location end-user downloads country specific driver that configures FPGA accordingly.

Jani Sir, as he is affectionately known, delivered the keynote at the Altera SOPC, which really touched upon how a fabless India was shining.

I also managed to catch up with Jordan Plofsky Senior Vice President Market, Altera. All I can add here as a sneak peek is: uncertainty favors FPGA’s usage! Let’s see how true — in my next blog!

My blog's been nominated by Electronics Weekly!

It was indeed a pleasant surprise to receive an email from Electronics Weekly, yesterday evening, informing me that my blog was recently shortlisted/nominated in the 2008 ElectronicsWeekly.com Blog Awards by a reader of ElectronicsWeekly.com!

All of the nominated blogs have apparently been considered by the panel of judges at ElectronicsWeekly.com. The email said, “I am delighted to inform you that you have made the shortlist in the Best Electronics Hardware Blog category.”

The list can be seen on Electronics Weekly’s (www.electronicsweekly.com) website!

Wow! I must add that here that there are such great blogs and bloggers in that list that I went dizzy for a few minutes!

I never expected my blog to reach this kind of appeal or level! Nor do I think I have that kind of traffic, as this blog has more to do with serious stuff, rather than talk about gadgets, etc. In fact, somebody once told me last year that no one would bother about a blog on semicon and electronics, nor would I get any traffic!

Well, all of this has never bothered me. I’m here to blog about what I feel is close to my heart! If folks happen to stop by, I am extremely grateful to all of them!

Irrespective of whether I win this award, it is just the right time to thank all of you, dear readers of my blog! Thanks to all of you for choosing to stop by my blog occasionally! I sincerely hope you find the content interesting and appealing enough.

There’s lots happening in the semiconductor, electronics and telecom industries, and hope that I am able to add my views on all of those in the coming months.

Thanks again, my dear readers. Please keep those suggestions coming. I will try to live up to your expectations. Have a great Halloween, everyone!

Solar, semi rocking in India; global semi recovery in 2010?

Wow! What a start for October! We have had a whole new range of activities going on! Fist, late September, the India Semiconductor Association organized a solar/PV conclave in New Delhi, where plans were laid out for India’s roadmap in the solar/PV field. the ISA-NMCC (National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council) report on the Indian solar PV market was also released at the conclave.

According to Poornima Shenoy, president, ISA, the year 2015 could be important for this industry. She said, “Around this time, the product cost of the Indian solar PV industry is likely to match the semi grid parity (peak power) globally, and also to match the grid parity within India.”

Next, AMD joined hands with Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC) of Abu Dhabi to create “The Foundry Company”, a leading-edge foundry production outfit. It will also join the IBM joint development alliance for silicon-on-insulator (SOI) and bulk silicon through 22nm generation. It will be very interesting to see how AMD now takes on Intel!

Messe Munchen put out a white paper on “How China, India and Eastern Europe are changing the global electronics market.” This is not surprising at all! You can download the report by clicking on the link here, and I must say, the report is really engaging!

On the same lines, Gartner came up with its analysis that China is dominating the global semiconductor scene, and that both India and Vietnam are gaining! India’s growing might in semicon is well documented! Also, last month, I had mentioned how the lack of a fab or the exit of a top professional from an Indian semicon firm would not hamper India’s growing fortunes in this industry!

The trials and tribulations of the global semiconductor industry were already touched upon by Derek Lidow of iSuppli. Analysts such as Malcolm Penn of Future Horizons and those at Gartner have been saying similar things, more or less. Penn advises that this is the time to stop chasing fashion and get back to basics. He adds, “The good news being the industry basics are mercifully as good as they get back.”

Gartner only expects a recovery for semiconductors sometime in 2010! According to Gartner, a collapse in memory spending, combined with a weak economy, is driving a major contraction in semiconductor capital equipment spending in 2008. The slowdown is likely to continue into 2009 before the industry recovers in 2010.

SEMI now has a presence in India. Sathya Prasad, formerly of Cadence, has been appointed as president of SEMI India with immediate effect. This is a further indication of India’s growing leadership in the semicon space. I will be getting into a discussion with Sathya Prasad sometime later.

Of course, we have the usual stuff like companies selling off or retiring 200mm fabs. Examples are NXP, Hynix, Renesas, etc. Also, DRAM prices continue to be weak and suppliers could likely face a credit crunch.

Interesting mix of happenings, isn’t it! While India rocks in solar and semicon, we are still speculating on a recovery for the global semiconductor industry. About time India took the lead in making that happen!

Finally, I was busy with Durga Puja, and hence, didn’t blog in a while. Will try my best and make up for my absence. I would like to take this opportunity to wish SHUBHO BIJOYA to all of my Bengali and non-Bengali friends.

Impact of RoHS

If any one of you has had the opportunity of attending any major electronics trade show across the Asia Pacific region, you cannot remain untouched by the impact that the RoHS (removal of hazardous substances) directive has had on suppliers.

The RoHS directive, which aims to restrict the level of hazardous substances used within new electronic and electrical equipment in the European Union (EU), is said to have had a “huge effect” on the industry so far, according to an expert.

It reminds me of a discussion I had with Man Yue, said to the seventh largest supplier of aluminum electrolytic capacitors late last year. Now Man Yue is huge and has the capability to invest in the expensive machinery required for RoHS.

Man Yue’s competitive edge is strengthened by its compliance with RoHS. It has been RoHS compliant since Q2-2004. The supplier had placed orders for ICPE-9000 machine, which was scheduled for delivery by end of 2006. This machine grinds the capacitor into powder and checks for banned substances.

The spokesman told me Man Yue has a RoHS lab as well. Man Yue has four XRF machines. It was planning to purchase the GCMS-QP2010 Plus, another high-end testing machine, which checks for banned substances. It will purchase the UVmini-1240 machine as well.

Now, I understand that investing in such machinery needs substantial amount of capital. Having seen suppliers across Asia Pac at close up, I hope many have managed to make the transition to buying and maintaining expensive machinery to check for banned substances.

I haven’t seen any leading articles on RoHS in India so far. However, I’m sure that the Indian manufacturers of electronics products have also made the shift.