Expert View

BANGALORE -- Synopsys, Inc., a world leader in semiconductor design software, developing software and offering professional services that companies use to design systems-on-chips (SoCs) and electronic systems. The company sells its products to semiconductor, computer, communications, consumer electronics, aerospace and other companies that develop electronic products.

It is the leading provider of electronic design automation (EDA) software and services used to design complex integrated circuits (ICs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and SoC for the global semiconductor and electronics industries. Synopsys solutions include pre-designed and pre-verified blocks of intellectual property (IP) that can be easily inserted into design flows, as well as technology to address yield and manufacturing issues early in the design process.

Convergence Plus recently spoke to Dr. Pradip Dutta, managing director and president, Synopsys (India) Pvt. Ltd., regarding the status of the Indian semiconductor industry and vis-à-vis its performance globally.

Convergence Plus: How do you see India's semiconductor industry growing? What growth do you envisage in India vis-à-vis globally? 

Pradip Dutta: The semiconductor industry in India is poised for strong growth because of various reasons such as more global engineering is being off-shored to India - mostly to in-house R&D centers and partly to third party engineering houses. Semiconductor design service is continuing to show robust growth opportunity in India, venture capital continues to favour chip design entities that have strong engineering footprint in India; recent trend is for high-end design companies to outsource entire engineering to a design service provider in India with architecture concept being done by a core team elsewhere; and domestic demand for semiconductors are rising in all areas - such as communication, computing and consumer electronics.

CP: Please comment on the size of the industry in India, the ecosystem needed for the growth of the industry, including manpower requirements and growth of end-user firms?

PD: Globally the industry is about US $250 to US $270 billion. Although we do not have an accurate market survey done yet, my best guess is that we are still a very small percentage, roughly five percent of the global volume. However, the growth trend is nearly 20 percent y-o-y. The India Semiconductor Association (ISA) is sponsoring a formal survey of this market and we expect some data to be made available in the next few months.

The ecosystem for the growth of this industry is primarily designing EDA tools and ultimately the manufacturing. The last element is still pretty much non-existent in India. The lack of trained manpower is also a serious bottleneck. According to the VLSI Society of India (VSI) this industry will require 10000 VLSI trained engineers per annum from year 2010. We are probably at around 20 percent that figure currently.

CP: Is semiconductor "The next big thing" to happen in India? 

PD: The big thing in India will continue to be software service; BPO, KPO etc. but the cool thing will be semiconductors for sure. As a matter of fact, lot of excellent, very high-end design work is happening in many of the MNC engineering centers here and also in some of the product-focused Indian design houses. However, the industry was fragmented and there was no common platform to highlight the achievements. With the formation of the India Semiconductor Association, we plan to project the achievements and the requirements of this industry in a more consolidated manner. 

CP: What challenges do Indian chip design services companies face? 

PD: I would say primarily the depth of talent and skill required to address the very high- end SOC work, followed by the ability to market the core competence to attract business, and finally the cost of sophisticated tools required to accomplish a end-to-end design of a 65 nm design.  

CP: How will the establishment of fabless semiconductor companies drive the semiconductor industry in India? 

PD: They can bring in the economy of scale in the design end of the spectrum; they can play the role of the aggregator and of course they can expose the country to varied design activities in all spectrums of application, from DSP to consumers to microprocessors.

CP: Please elaborate on the latest technological trends in ICs and semiconductors? 

PD: In my opinion the latest trend has to do with low power and full function. In other words, markets are looking for devices that pack in huge range of functionalities like integration of cell phone, camera, MP3 player, storage, PDA etc. and all of these functions being available for long periods of time between recharging. 

CP: What are the R&D-related activities in this industry in India? 

PD: R&D activities in low power are happening in both IC design companies as well with EDA tool vendors. The other primary R&D activity for the EDA guys is to be able to assist in ensuring high yield manufacturing for the design folks.  

CP: Give us an overview of your organisation, stating its performance in the last quarter? 

PD: Synopsys is world's leading EDA supplier with over 4000 employees. We are established in over 60 countries. Currently in India we are over 400 employees based out of Bangalore, Hyderabad and Noida and we plan to continue to add people on selective basis based on skills they bring in and the needs that we have. We do not follow any targeted headcount growth strategy. Our R&D in India is one of the largest outside NA. We do not report India numbers separately. We are currently consolidating multiple office locations in Bangalore in a large campus. We have no announced expansion plans in our other locations. 

CP: What should the government do to eliminate the hurdles in making India a preferred hub for electronics design services? 

PD: Primarily the government can help in reducing the barriers of bureaucracy. We would like to be able to bond/ debond /clear customs all our items and our premises in a single day. Better still, we should ask ourselves if there is any value in still maintaining processes that are decades old in an industry where the rate of obsolescence is the highest.  

Contact:
Synopsys
www.synopsys.com