The Hindu Business Line : In the thick of action

The Indian semiconductor market is poised for a quantum leap with demand set to shoot up from consumer electronics and other applications. Freescale Semiconductor, a spin-off company of Motorola, is bullish on the Indian opportunity. Ganesh Guruswamy, Country Manager and Director, Freescale Semiconductor India, gives an overview of the semiconductor market and the company's game plan. Excerpts from a chat with eWorld:

Freescale recently announced a major expansion in India. What are its plans?

Freescale, formerly Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector, began its sales centre in Bangalore in 1990 and commenced its R&D operations in 1998. It currently operates its India Design Centre at the country headquarters in Noida, India Software Centre and sales office in Bangalore, employing over 500 people in R&D, sales and support.

The company recently announced plans to expand its India operations in 2006 with the acquisition of a 3 lakh sq.ft campus in Noida and a 1 lakh sq.ft campus in Bangalore. We plan to triple our headcount to 1,500 engineers in India over the next four years to support Freescale's global R&D efforts.

Which are the areas Freescale expects to handle out of the Indian operations?

Freescale's India Design Centre (IDC) focuses on IP (intellectual property) development and system-on-chip (SoC) design. It is one of two centres of excellence in the Asia-Pacific region and will be the largest design centre outside of the US once the expansion is complete.

While the IDC primarily focuses on wireless technologies, it is increasingly focussing on R&D for all three of Freescale's business groups serving the transportation, networking and consumer markets.

The IDC focuses on technologies such as 65Nanometer and 90Nanometer, process technologies, efficient design methodologies, creation of digital and mixed signal processing IPs and low-tier to high-tier processor cores such as Power, Coldfire, Onyx, ARM, StarCore and Hawk. Centres of Excellence have been built for Home Networking & Residential gateways and Power-based SoCs following Freescale's entry into Power.org.

The India Software Centre in Bangalore is envisioned to become one of the largest software centres for Freescale outside of the US.The centre is involved in software development for cellular platforms, strengthening Freescale's leadership in mobile platform solutions and technologies, a key growth area for Freescale.

It focuses on embedded software solutions.

The sales team is tapping India's emerging semiconductor and electronics market to address the need for embedded products and solutions in the Indian auto, industrial, consumer, networking and wireless sectors. In addition, we support design centres of transnational corporations, contract manufacturing companies and design services companies who design for global customers, in India.

How does Freescale see India and the region as a market?

Freescale believes in India's potential not only as a design hub but also as a market for embedded and semiconductor products and solutions. India is fast becoming a key player in the hi-tech and semiconductor industry.

Arecent ISA-Frost & Sullivan report predicts a surge in demand for consumer electronics, communications and wireless products. India's semiconductor industry will focus on those high-growth markets, especially in the wireless, automotive, industrial and telecom segments. Freescale is developing the market offering solutions across segments.

In the automotive segment, Freescale's microcontrollers and sensors are used for body and engine control systems. The industrial segment depends on similar products for UPS, inverters, energy meters and motor control applications.

We expect to see growth in the telecom space in both wired and wireless, for base station and client applications as also in the consumer space.

India offers a talent pool of design and software engineers and continues to build on its strengths in embedded software and design in the region.

What are Freescale plans for the convergence market in terms of design and solutions? How close are we towards actually achieving convergence?

The year 2005 saw convergence devices gaining popularity, with feature-rich mobile devices gaining momentum. Camera and video-phones, music with mobile phones, smart phones loaded with applications that enable mobile computing were just some of the trends in handset design.

To some people, the promise of convergence is that one day soon your refrigerator is also going to be your microwave. So convergence means different things to different people.

Also, at the network level, the capability of embedded processors will soon allow just about every device worth connecting to the network with the ability to be connected.

If you are referring to an all-in-one device, that is still some time away. Several challenges lie in the way - power, infrastructure and form factor being constraints. The Mobile eXtreme Convergence architecture is a good example of how we are attempting to drive convergence in the wireless market. The MXC platform is the result of two years of intense research and development by Freescale engineers. The India team has played a key role in the base band, design specification and validation for MXC technology since 2004.

Key changes have been effected in the size (the chip is the size of a postage stamp), power management, security features, packaging and process technology.

When productised, the architecture will deliver a complete smartphone platform in a 16 mm x 20 mm package and a slim 1.4 mm, enabling virtually any device — an MP3 player, a hand-held DVD player, a digital camera — to become a smartphone.

Finally, at Freescale, we believe the more important part of the convergence story is taking place around standards. Open standards will allow companies to focus on innovating, and spend less time worrying about infrastructure.

How do you see India as a market for semiconductors. Is fab a reality now?

On the manufacturing front, several proactive government initiatives in the recent past favour semiconductor manufacturing in India. However, manufacturing is at a very nascent stage in our country and though these initiatives will propel the growth of manufacturing here, I expect this will be gradual and steady progress.

Infrastructure is a prerogative for any industry to thrive and prosper. Semiconductor manufacturing requires unlimited power and water supply in addition to efficient waste-management processes. Initiatives are necessary in this direction.

In the current scenario, it would be fair to say India’s design capability will grow at a faster pace. But this could change if the industry and government work proactively to enable manufacturing capabilities.

How big is the market you address?

The total market for semiconductors in India (including imports) was worth $2.06 billion in 2004, grew to $2.82 billion in 2005, is expected to reach $12.67 billion in 2010 and further grow to $36.30 billion in 2015, growing at a CAGR of 29.8 per cent, according to ISA-Frost & Sullivan.

vrishi@thehindu.co.in