A delegation from the Israeli semiconductor industry is visiting Bangalore to meet Indian players and explore business opportunities.
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 The Indian Semiconductor Association (ISA) today hosted the delegation, comprising senior managers of Israeli fab and fabless companies, as well as academicians from Israeli technical institutes. The delegation will explore the possibilities of chip designing in two Indian cities, Bangalore and Hyderabad.
Possible areas of collaboration are RTL-GDSII design, verification, physical design and embedded system software.
The delegation head and chairman of the Israeli high-tech CEO forum, Sol Gradman, said, "We have come here to explore capabilities in India. There are about 150 design centres in Israel. However, some of the design-related work like RTL-GDSII design, verification, physical design and embedded software could be outsourced. We believe that several Indian companies have very good capabilities as well as with Israel companies."
ISA president Poornima Shenoy said, "This is the first time we are seeing a delegation of design companies coming from Israel to India. In the past, we have had equipment manufacturers coming; I think it’s a positive step as they are hardcore chip design companies. There are lots of potential domestic companies as well as Israeli companies."
She added, "Israel comes third in fabless after US and Taiwan and Indian design industry is about $6 billion. They will see some companies in Bangalore and Hyderabad and let’s see where it goes from here."
Shenoy said, "India has strong capabilities in chip design. When we talk about Indian chip design industry, we talk about VLSI design, core design and embedded software. About 81 per cent of the jobs and revenues are at embedded software. We have complex design executed out from here. So far, bulk of the memberships of the industry has been multinational but lot of small and mid-size companies are coming up too. With the present global economic scenario, lot of companies is looking at reducing cost but cost could be just one factor though in this industry, it is not the only factor to make the business decision."
On government support, Gradman said, "We don’t expect any support from Indian government. We believe this is business-to-business collaboration as it makes sense for both sides from business aspects and on the technical aspects as well. But we welcome any support and co-operation from government. So far, we didn’t pursue this."
Gradman stressed the importance of partnering with Indian companies rather than collaborating with multinationals, "We are meeting about ten companies both in Bangalore and Hyderabad, mainly the design centres. We are looking for Indian companies originally from India; we are not going after MNCs. We are looking for India like Wipro, Tata, MindTree, Sasken and many others."
Senior research associate Avinoam Kolodny from VLSI Systems Research Center at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, threw some light on collaborative efforts in education and research between India and Israel.
Kolodny said, "Research is always a big challenge because we have to come up with new ideas that people don’t imagine yet. Mostly in the applications, new applications are invented all the time. Nobody knows what the killer applications of the future are. As far as technology, we have our interesting roadmap and complexity will still be able to grow. But, we are not sure what’s the next step is controlling this complexity… We believe that it’s in multiple use computing and on-chip networking, that’s the area we are researching."
On expertise, Kolodny added, "I will ask the industrial people in this conference. Do the engineers know enough or what do they need to know or what would be the good way to educate them? The most difficult question about the areas we are not sure about yet. What are the future needs for the education?... I believe number of engineers is not the problem, it’s the quality that matters."
Both Gradman and Shenoy accepted the fact that the semi-conductor industry is also not immune to the economic downturn, though they believe that it will continue to grow.
Gradman said, "The semi-conductor market is strong enough to continue to be there and continue to grow when market gets better”.
Shenoy voiced the same opinion, saying, "I don’t think anyone is immune today, though what is happening is unfortunate. It would be very premature to say to what extent and how much or how longer the recovery would be. It seems that lots of companies are sitting on cash and they are not bankrupt - but they are cautious, which I think is not a bad policy." X |