By Suganya Sankaran, Senior Product Marketing Engineer, Microchip Technology India
India is a leading embedded design player in Asia. Its core strengths are the high quality and availability of engineers, cost effectiveness, and English proficiency. Many companies in the embedded design industry like Microchip Technology, Freescale Semiconductor, Renesas, Texas Instruments, and STMicroelectronics have their design houses in India to take advantage of its key strengths.
At Microchip, we cover the entire spectrum in India starting from designing modules for our microcontrollers to designing the entire microcontroller, developing software, and reference designs.
RANGE OF DESIGNS India plays a major role in the embedded design starting from 4-bit to 32-bit microcontrollers. There are about 60,000 employed engineers, mostly in chip-level and OS-related programming, middleware/embedded applications, and testing and protocol development.
The prominent market segments for embedded designs in India are consumer, communication, automotive, industrial, and medical electronics. In the consumer segment, embedded designs are used in televisions, set-top boxes, DVD players, and home appliances like air-conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, etc. In the automotive segment, embedded designs done in India are used in digital CDI units in two-wheeler automobiles and in clusters for two and four-wheeler automobiles. In the area of communication, base transceiver station and handsets are the end-products of embedded designs done in India. In the Industrial segment, 16-bit microcontrollers are widely used in three-phase electronic energy meters. Heart-rate monitors, ultrasound machines, glucose meters, and blood pressure monitors are some examples of medical electronics where embedded designs are widely used.
Microchip India is involved in 8-, 16-, and 32-bit embedded designs, catering to the automotive, industrial, consumer, and medical electronics segments.
BENCHMARKING INDIA While wafer fabrication and chip assembly facilities have migrated largely to Korea, Greater China, and Singapore, design services have been shifting to India. Indian design organizations are moving away from the image of being low-cost centers to becoming true product innovators. In 2007, the Indian Semiconductor Association (ISA) and Ernst &Young conducted a benchmarking study comparing the capabilities of India, China, Taiwan, Israel, US, UK, and Czech Republic. India has been rated higher than China and Taiwan in terms of availability and scalability of talent, quality of talent, quality of technical education, and legal and IP protection.
Over the years many MNCs are opening design centers in India or expanding their existing facilities. Intel, AMD, Microchip, NXP Semiconductors, Renesas Technology, Freescale, and STMicroelectronics are among the companies that leverage the country’s rich intellectual infrastructure. Microchip’s design and development operations in India contribute significantly to the total revenue indirectly by undertaking product design and application development to global OEMs and electronic manufacturing services.
India contributes to less than 1 percent of the global embedded industry today. However, with the semiconductor industry in India projected to grow at a CAGR of 26 percent in 2009 as per ISA’s report, the embedded design industry in India is also bound to flourish.
The 16-bit microcontrollers are gaining momentum in India in various application segments. In addition, the 16- and 32-bit microcontrollers are also competing with microprocessors in high-end niche applications. These are clear signs of a sure and sustained growth of the embedded design industry in the country.
Microchip has ranked number one in unit shipments of 8-bit microcontrollers since 2002. In 2006 we secured the number one position in worldwide 8-bit microcontroller revenue worldwide, further strengthening our position as a global market-share leader in 8-bit microcontrollers. Microchip has expanded its product line into 16-bit microcontrollers and recently announced 32-bit microcontroller devices, leveraging on strong presence in the embedded control market space. Microchip offers seamless migration among its 8-bit, 16- bit, and 32-bit products.
Author information You can reach Suganya Sankaran at suganya.sankaran@microchip.com
