Indian semicon needs concrete plans

The Indian semiconductor market is still in a nascent stage. In the Indian context, while we are very good in design services, we have yet to achieve the required capability to build products.

In this context, Subhash Bal, Country Director, Synopsys (India) EDA Software Pvt. Ltd says: "One has to first understand the dynamics of the semiconductor market. The key is: if you grow a market here, it will also grow somewhere else. That's where the trick lies!"

The Indian semiconductor industry really needs to figure out what will work! "It would be better to think about solving a particular problem, which will go on to solve a bigger problem for India. There is also a need to build incentives to go along with al of this," adds Bal.

He states: "We should produce a plan to take semiconductors forward in India. We need to be realistic about what we can do with the semiconductor industry. India should better be up there, at the top, in terms of technology as well. For example, RFID can be used in a whole range of applications."

Way forward
What can be the way forward for the Indian semiconductor industry? First, there is a need to create a plan for Indians residing in the USA to return home and start something. They should be offered a lot of incentives as well. Next, there is a need to allow developing schemes where Indian applications become the focus, especially for high-volume government applications, such as traffic light controls, ID cards, toll tax applications, etc.

"Such things will only trigger demand. It will also see the rise of Indian product companies, and later, those will grow into semiconductor companies," advises Bal.

Indian fab story disappearing?
Is the Indian fab story disappearing from sight? Not exactly! There will be a lot of solar fabs coming up, while it is still early days for wafer IC fabs. Fabs for PV cells are relatively easy to set up. Undoubtedly, PV has a huge market potential.

On the subject of fabs, Bal says: "The technique of management of fab technology is crucial. There should be some government schemes for smaller fabs as well. It does not matter whether these are 150mm or 180mm fabs. Indigenous applications can source simple applications, such as autorickshaw meters, toll tax applications, etc."

Bal, like many others, believes that the next decade clearly depends on the youth of India. Therefore, this plan for semiconductors has to be long term -- for about 25-30 years -- and action oriented. This has to start from an end solution, and thereafter, semiconductors should be able to take off!

"Apart from such a plan, it is also important that sufficient attention is given to developing the right infrastructure. Infrastructure needs to be fixed as well. Should these be addressed, the semiconductor industry in India will likely take off," adds Bal.

Globally, Synopsys has been growing steadily. In fact, the Q1-08 revenue is likely to close at $325 million. Synopsys India has a current headcount of over 600 employees, located in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Noida. The activities of the Hyderabad center is global in nature.

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.

Growing interest in Indian semicon -- top 10 most read articles

It is soon going to be a year since the semicon Web site was launched by CIOL. Over the past year, I have noted with delight the growing interest in the Indian semiconductor industry.

Here is a collection of the 10 best articles for my readers. All articles link to those appearing on CIOL.

1. Indian semicon industry: Early steps taken, miles to go!
The Indian semiconductor design industry had a turnover of US $3.2 billion in 2005 with an engineering workforce of around 75,000. It is estimated to reach US $43 billion by 2015 and provide jobs to 780,000 professionals with a CAGR of around 30 percent for this period.

2. Indian semicon special: Increasing brand value for semicon within India
S. Janakiraman, president and CEO –- R&D Services, Mindtree Consulting, and chairman, India Semiconductor Association (ISA), is quite bullish on the advantages of India and the opportunities provided in the Indian semiconductor industry. Here, he speaks on a host of topics, ranging from the outlook for next year, as well as the fab and semiconductor policies, Indian ecosystem, etc.

3. Indian semicon special: Is the timing right for having fabs in India?
It has been some months since the Indian government announced the semiconductor policy. Some fabs are on the way, and lot of CEOs and other industry leaders from leading global semiconductor majors have been visiting India lately.

4. Indian fab guidelines promise exciting times for semicon, electronics
India seeks investments in ecosystem units for LCDs, OLEDs, PDPs, solar cells, photovoltaics, storage devices, advanced micro and nanotech products, etc.

5. Indian semicon policy ground breaking
These comments from Michael R. Splinter, president and CEO, Applied Materials, were enough to indicate how much the Indian semiconductor policy, announced recently by the government of India, has caught the attention of the global semicon majors.

6. Indian ecosystem will not enable faster product development cycles
The economy of scale may also not justify having a wafer fab facility to cater only to the Indian market, says Dr. H.V. Ananda, Synplicity.

7. India should be known for its semicon might
The semiconductor industry is poised for high growth and will make all round progress be in design or manufacturing or consumption. Issues to tackle are the rising costs and not yet conducive infrastructure.

8. ISA-F&S: India growing almost thrice as faster as global semicon
According to India Semiconductor Association (ISA) and Frost & Sullivan (ISA-F&S), India's 2007 annual growth in semiconductor market is nearly triple the rate at which the global semiconductor market is expanding.

9. India ascends in the embedded value chain
Indian semicon, embedded design industry to grow from $3.25bn in 2005 to $14.42bn in 2010 and $43.07bn in 2015.

10. India rapidly becoming hub for embedded designs worldwide
India design services companies are involved in embedded hardware and software design in the latest embedded market segments such as automotive infotainment, digital security and surveillance.

I'd like to say a very big thanks to all of my readers. I am also working on another semicon special, which should be out next month on CIOL. The semicon special for 2008 -- a collection of industry leading articles, will be online middle of next month.

Indian design services to hit $10.96bn by 2010

This is a continuation of my previous blog on the Indian design services segment.

Revenues for the VLSI, board design and embedded software market in India are likely to touch US $10.96bn in 2010, according to an ISA-IDC study titled India Semiconductor and Embedded Design Market, 2007-2010. This market will grow from US $6.08bn in 2007 to US $7.37bn in 2008, on to US $8.97bn in 2009, respectively.

The total design services market in India is said to have grown at 21 percent year on year (y-o-y), as against a global growth of 6 percent y-o-y. According to Kapil Dev Singh, Country Manager, IDC (I) Ltd, the impending recession in US and sheer volume of work from US will put pressure on man-month rates and they will increase marginally. Currently there are close to 200+ companies active in India.

Touching upon the market trends for 2007 in the India semiconductor and embedded design market, he added that India will continue to be the preferred destination of choice for companies interested in embedded design and development.

There will also be an increased emphasis on IP development, as third-party design services companies look to move up the value chain. Next, localization of products design and manufacturing from India will drive significant investments by product and design services companies leading to a further fueling of growth.

However, he cautioned that the industry will continue to face significant challenges in managing the demand and workforce churn. The industry will also have to constantly evolve, upgrade and innovate, while keeping the costs down in order to stay cost competitive in the global market. Future trends in this industry will further witness the increasing proximity between the third-party service providers and OEMs for end-to-end product design.

Indan design services industry snapshot
The Indian VLSI design services contributed approximately 13 percent to the overall revenues and 11 percent to overall workforce. There has been an increase in consumer and portable/wireless segment, that has indirectly contributed to the growth of the VLSI design service industry in India. Spec to tape-out designs are gradually increasing as well, largely contributed to by the captive units. The IP development will continue to grow steadily during the forecast period.

The Indian hardware/board design industry contributed to 7.2 percent of the overall technical workforce in the design services industry. The trend of VLSI design houses transforming into one-stop design houses has increased the activity in the hardware/board design area. Growth is likely to come from consumer electronics and portable/wireless product segment in 2008. Product development activities for the Indian market will further boost growth.

The Indian embedded software industry is by and large, the most significant contributor. Embedded software contributed approximately 81 percent to the overall design services revenues and 82 percent to the overall workforce. Having a local manufacturing ecosystem will boost this segment with end-to-end product development and roll-out happening from India. Singh said that middleware/embedded applications along with testing will drive the growth in the market.

Two vectors for industry
Singh added that there were two vectors that the industry could go to. One, focus on export revenue and go closer to markets -- to their customers' markets and be part of product development. And two, focus on product development, as it would drive semiconductors and embedded design. He termed the growth achieved in the last three decades as version 1.0 and said India was ready to move on to version 2.0 in the coming years.

In version 2.0, the dynamics between the semiconductor industry ecosystem players would be transformed in the coming years. Also, there will be a disruption, which will see the entities shift their strategies, align and engage with each other within this ecosystem in a manner that will take them up one level in the overall product value chain.

E.K. Bharat Bhushan, director general, STPI, commented: "India is a very important destination. A wide range of design activities are now going on here. Semiconductor design has made rapid strides. India currently has strengths in areas such as IP development, and core advantages in terms of talent and local domestic market."

VLSI as a career in India

It is a great pleasure to find people, most of whom I don't even know, either leave comments on my blog, or even leave a post asking for help. First of all, I would like to thank all of those who read my blog posts. Two, I would like to thank a reader, Paul, for his best wishes pertaining to my recovery. Thank you friend!

I would also like to address a query left by a young reader R. Shrivatsan. It is my pleasure to let you all know that he is going to do a PG course in VLSI in Bangalore. There are lot of opportunities in the VLSI space in the country, and it would do India a lot of good if more such youngsters took to this line. India needs people with experience in VLSI!

I am not a career consultant, nor am I qualified enough to give VLSI tips to people. However, I will try and list some sites who can offer that kind of guidance to people interested in VLSI as a career.

A very good place to start looking for VLSI related information is the VLSI Society of India. This is the site that covers all that is related to VLSI. There are some related sites as well, and I am sure it would help those interested in pursuing VLSI as a career. The India Semiconductor Association is also a good place to ask around for VLSI related information.

I'd like to add that the VLSI Society of India signed an MoU with the Visweswaraya Technological University (Belgaum, Karnataka) and the India Semiconductor Association in June 2005 to spread and improve the quality of VLSI education. Under the aegis of this MoU, colleges that offer M.Tech programs in VLSI Design and Embedded Systems have been identified as centers where champions from the industry will work in close cooperation with faculty champions to improve the quality of M.Tech programs.

I also came across certain sites offering some valuable information. The VLSI Chip Design site lists some of the leading ASIC and VLSI design companies in India. Then, there is this nice little blog -- India VLSI -- which also has some good indications as far as VLSI companies in India are concerned.

Next, there's a nice site -- VLSI Chip Design -- which also offers lots of answers, as well as news, jobs and views about the semiconductor industry in India.

Further, there a host of very good verification companies in India, such as EVE, Tessolve, etc. Lot of work is going on in this space as well. I also came across EDA 101 -- a new community for electronic design engineers, managers, students and consultants whose career includes use or management of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools in modern digital and analog design.

There is lot of information going around on opportunities in VLSI in India. My best wishes to Shrivatsan, and hope that India gets a great VLSI engineer.

Lastly, I would like to invite knowledgeable people to send me links, etc. on any good sites, education institutes in India, pertaining to VLSI. I will publish the links and information on my blog and also acknowledge those people. Many thanks!

Indian designers could lead in EDA product development

There will be the multi-nationalization of the product development process, according to Walden C. Rhines, chairman & CEO, Mentor Graphics. More executives recognize that "access to qualified personnel" is the key driver. As per A.T. Kearney Global Services Location Index 2007, India is the most attractive offshoring destination. He was speaking at the Though Leadership Forum organized by the India Semiconductor Association.

Touching on the evolution of EDA, and the role of Indian designers, Rhines said that most electronic engineers did not consider themselves "risk takers". Most electronic engineers also don't like to change tools and fewer even consider "hot" new tools.

On the contrary, young engineers and recent university graduates eagerly adopted new technology. It is a way for them to distinguish themselves, get the productivity advantage and they were less invested in existing methodologies.

Indian designers smart
Comparing Indian designers with the rest of the world, he said that electronic designers in India, on an average, are less experienced than in the United States, Europe and Japan. However, they are on an average, as smart, or smarter, than those in United States, Europe and Japan. There has been an increasing influence of India design centers on the multinational design flows and tools.

Disruptive change creates leadership opportunities. There has been improved power and cost through improved system architecture. The C synthesis enables faster architectural exploration and shorter time to Verilog.

C synthesis matches or exceeds hand coded RTL efficiency, as per STMicroelectronics (Reed-Solomon, Galois Field Multiplier). There have also been system architectural innovations to reduce die size -- Ericsson mobile platforms. There is a need to iterate to find the optimum architecture.

Now, Indian designers have been early adopters of C-based design. The reasons were, one there was a willingness to try new approaches and two, it caused multinational parent companies to accelerate their own adoption.

India is likely to be a leader in transaction level design. They have been able to extract fast, accurate power and timing models from RTL. They have managed runs 100x-1000x faster vs. RTL, retained accuracy at the gate level and RTL, their models run with application software for hardware/software cosimulation, and they have done transaction-based verification using emulation. It has been the same for UPF-compatible verification.

Some other areas of verification where India may lead the way are assertions, coverage based verification, and algorithmic test bench synthesis.

Adoption of place and route technology
Let us see how the adoption of new place and route technology has influenced the industry. When a design flow breaks, what breaks the most often? Place and route breaks every two technology generations. Technology generations ramp to peak volume. Place and route utilizes a semiconductor company's internal software until gate array routers emerge.

Cell-based layout requires hierarchical router with timing. Tangent attacks leading-edge 0.75 micron designs. Later, Cadence became the dominant place and route supplier at 0.35 micron as the fabless industry grew demand. [Cadence acquired Tangent in 1989]. However, at 0.25 microns, SoC drives new technology requirements. This led to the collapse of the FAM business model.

SoC needs "break" the flow. ArcSys emerged at 0.35/0.25 micron. It addresses SoC requirements for large sizes and interconnect delay. It goes public as Avant!, and is later acquired by Synopsys. However, a timing closure crisis emerges at 0.13 micron. Cadence and Avant!/Synopsys try to extend older tool architectures.

Now, timing closure "breaks" the design flow. At this point, Magma emerges at 0.13 micron with timing-driven layout solution. At 90nm, Magma dominates timing-driven design. It also approaches Cadence, Avant!/Synopsys place and route market share. What the industry witnesses is that a new problem emerges and a new, leading-edge solution provider enters every two nodes.

And now, pressures are creating 65/45nm discontinuity. These are process and design variations, low-power requirements, and large design data sizes. Explosive growth in complexity requires multi-corner, multi-mode analysis.

Achieving power/performance design goals requires analysis of corner cases for manufacturing and operational variability. Manufacturing variability multiplies the required corner cases. Hence, manufacturing variability now "breaks" the place and route flow at 65nm. With the advent of 45nm, it demands design for manufacturing (DFM), and ushers in more corners.

Implications for EDA in India
So what are the implications for EDA in this scenario, especially from an Indian context? One, introduce and support leading-edge design tools in India. Two, EDA startups will focus initial sales efforts in San Jose and India. Three, purchasing decisions will increasingly incorporate India design teams to drive flows and decisions. Four, India will emerge as the test bed for new design ideas. As a result, Indian designers would exercise their influence by demanding the best-in-class design tools and capabilities.

Indian designers should always remain open to new design approaches. They should beware of becoming risk adverse as they become more experienced. They should need to stay abreast of the emerging innovations by maintaining close contact with EDA companies, including start-ups. They also need to make EDA suppliers aware of their issues and challenges.