Reaching out for leading edge
India’s design industry continues its march with designers reaching out for leading-edge designs. Though currently most designs are at nodes 90nm and above, in 2007 designs at 65nm will constitute 16 percent of the total designs (figures from iSuppli).These designs will come from not only MNC captive design centers but also local independent design centers, which shows the maturity of the local industry. Indeed, India has a track record of solving complex VLSI design problems across nodes even as deep as 45nm.
Because of the flexibility they provide, local design houses are expanding faster than captive design houses. Their share of the market size is projected to expand from 35 percent in 2005 to 49 percent in 2010, as the IC design industry grows from $596 million in 2005 to $2.105 billion in 2010 at a CAGR of 29 percent. The local houses are primarily into front-end design work, providing testing and verification services. However, they are gradually evolving to provide end-to-end design activities, ranging from specifications to tape-outs.
Over half the design revenues come from the wireless segment. Designers are slowly moving into other segments, especially consumer, automotive, and data processing.
iSuppli estimates that an IC design in India is developed at 30 percent of the cost in the US or Japan. This cost advantage, coupled with the availability of skilled designers, gives India a global advantage as a design hub, and today India has a well developed ecosystem of design firms, EDA vendors, IP firms, testing and verification firms, and embedded software firms, giving the country the capability of coming out with great designs and taking them through testing and verification to fabrication. With the recent spurt of fabs, fabless, and EMS/ODM in India, the range and volume of designs is growing, giving India yet greater scope to do bigger designs. Recent incentives announced by the Indian government for setting up fabs in India is yet another impetus for design growth.
In this supplement, Indian companies briefly examine a great design they have done.
