The Hindu Business Line : HP unit may design chips for switches

ProCurve Networking, a division of Hewlett-Packard, is looking at designing chips for switches. It offers network infrastructure devices such as routers, switches, wireless access points and VPN client software. Its Bangalore centre is currently working on embedded software and policy-management.

"We are looking at building our team to include ASICs (application specific integrated circuit) chip design here," said Mr Amol Mitra, Director, Global Product Marketing, ProCurve Networking.

Speaking to Business Line after the announcement of new products for the Indian market, he said the company would look at hiring hardware engineers and training them to meet this purpose. Declining to give details, Mr Motra said the plans were yet to be finalised. The firm's US centre currently does research and development on ASICs using 0.13 micron (130 nanometer) process technology for the 5300 series of switches.

Now, its India centre would collaborate with it to design ASICs for switches.

The company will only remain in the ASIC design space, said Mr Mitra, and has no plans to go deeper into the semiconductor industry.

ProCurve introduced a stand-alone wireless access point 530, a wireless edge services xl module and three radio ports 802.11a (a voice transfer protocol), 802.11b (data transfer, 11mbps) and 802.11g (data transfer, 54 mbps). The company also announced it had revamped its management software, making it much more user-friendly.

ProCurve owns 2.62 per cent share in the network infrastructure market for APAC in 2005, while networking behemoth Cisco owns 42.41 per cent. The company is offering lifetime guarantee to counter this competition.

The network infrastructure market in India is growing (in revenues) at 17.9 per cent CAGR (from 2005-2010), according to a study by the Dell'Oro group. This division is headquartered at Singapore and employs 65 in India.

Hewlett-Packard is a $87.9 billion IT multinational. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, services, home computing and imaging and printing.

ProCurve's move marks the beginning of the firm's entry into chip design domain.