Indian VLSI ecosystem—from mature to innovative

The current hardware and VLSI design ecosystem and talent pool in India has three primary tributaries that have fed into it: the state-run public sector organizations, Indian subsidiaries of transnational corporations, and a few pioneering indigenous private sector corporations.

State-run public sector organizations such as SCL (Semiconductor Complex Ltd) and C-DoT (Center for Development of Telematics) were setup in 1983-1984 with the mandate and objective to create a strong R&D base and to design and develop VLSI circuits and systems. Indian subsidiaries of trans-national corporations were initially setup as software development centers and evolved over a period of time to include hardware/VLSI design.

Indigenous private sector organizations such as Wipro initially started out operations that included the design and manufacture of computers and systems targeted to meet the requirements of the Indian domestic market. In an adaptation response to changes in the regulatory tariff structures, the hardware/systems design organization within Wipro evolved into what is today the largest independent provider of VLSI design services worldwide.

FROM 350nm TO 45nm IN 10 YEARS
In the early 1990s, technical competency in the VLSI space was developed via Wipro engineers traveling to major semiconductor houses in the United States and working as part of their teams. The second stage was the formation of Offshore Development Centers in India around these seed engineers. By the turn of the century, the offshoring model achieved greater maturity. Trust levels with Wipro’s semiconductor customers had increased to a level where complete chips started getting executed by Wipro.

In 1998, Wipro participated in its first SoC design executed out of India—a 350nm-node based network-enabled media player around an ARM processor core. Wipro’s contribution remained confined to module design, verification, synthesis and test with practically no play at the top level of the chip. A first silicon success of this relatively modest chip resulted in a greater belief in the maturity of the offshore model for VLSI and a consequent explosion of customer wins.

The year 2001 saw the unveiling of Wipro’s proprietary EagleWision design methodology—a distillation of VLSI specific engineering knowledge built up over the years. Since then Wipro has been on the leading edge of 45nm, 65nm and 90nm SoC/ASIC designs—tracking the prevailing state-of-the-art process nodes, EDA tools, productivity and design complexity metrics worldwide. Niche skills in the areas of ESL modeling, cell library, analog and RF design, and silicon process were developed via focused incubation programs.

PUSHING THE LIMITS OF PROCESS NODES
From a single chip design in 1998, Wipro now develops more than 150 chips per year with designs in diverse areas such as ultra-low power wireless sensor network chips, RFID modems, personal media players, mobile multimedia application processors, multi-format A/V decoders, safety critical automotive controllers, and massively multi-core computing engines.

One such program that pushed the limits of design and tool infrastructure was the development of an entertainment ASIC. The chip had more than 75 million gates running at a core clock of 600Mhz with a die size exceeding 250mm2. Designed for a first of its kind application in the world, Wipro’s engineering team achieved a functional first pass success of this complex design.

Specifically in the niche area of analog circuit design Wipro has implemented several analog designs such as PLLs, LDOs and Oscillators for it customers. These designs have been executed in a variety of technologies including advanced 65nm process nodes.

The limits of designs done by Wipro go beyond just the latest process node and pushing the performance envelope. Low power consumption is extremely important for consumer markets and one ultra-low power design done at Wipro enables wireless sensors to run for up to 10 years on a single AA battery. Using Wipro’s own WirelessLAN IP for the development, Wipro was able to provide a solution that would enable users to save money, save energy and work smarter.

In another program, the design teams were able to implement a bandgap circuit, an oscillator, and a LCD driver with devices working in the sub threshold region and achieve current consumption numbers of 650nA, 0.1µA and 0.9µA, respectively. The innovative implementation of these circuits played a key role in the solution meeting its overall battery life requirement of up to three years on a “coin cell” battery—a key product specification for this particular medical application.

TAKING INNOVATION TO THE NEXT LEVEL
As Wipro made this transition, the Indian subsidiaries of transnational companies had also evolved to the point where complete state of the art multicore possessors (DSPs and CPUs) in advanced 45nm process nodes were executed out of design centers in India.

Today, Wipro is a living example of the oft-quoted one-stop-shop for VLSI related engineering service. The VLSI ecosystem in India has seen a major shift from a customer-managed cost arbitrage model to a solution provider that contributes directly (and not just participates) to the innovation required to engineer a customer product that is a market success.

These solutions go beyond just the new designs. For example, each year semiconductor companies spend enormous sums and tie up valuable engineering resources retargeting existing analog circuits from one silicon process to another. The large cycle time required to migrate analog circuits the traditional way results in further cost increases (in terms of missed opportunities). To address this particular customer pain point, Wipro launched “Port on Demand”. This service, packaged around IN2FAB’s unique patented migration tools, offers a widely silicon proven solution for process migration of analog circuits with vastly reduced cycle times—in some cases as little as two weeks.

SUMMARY
Having achieved the technical expertise to match global expectations, industries in India such as medical electronics and local adaptations of existing devices should see a high growth as part of the next wave of innovation. Several Indian defense and aerospace programs, Chandrayaan-2 for example, going forward would require larger and increasingly integrated semiconductor devices.

The current global downturn has pushed engineering talent in the local ecosystem to actively evaluate solutions that can be applied to India and other emerging markets. Key advances will be achieved either directly by visionary organizations with the right leadership. The combination of the current market situation and the VLSI ecosystem in India has the right ingredients for an explosion of creativity. Necessity might just be the mother of innovation, and the innovative will thrive.


About the authors
Anand Valavi is Group Head for Analog and Mixed Signal Design at Wipro Technologies. You can reach him at anand.valavi@wipro.com.

Sujeeth Joseph is Principal Architect for Semiconductors at Wipro Technologies. You can reach him at sujeeth.joseph@wipro.com.