“We are the top supplier of PLDs to India”

How long has Actel been active in India?
We got a foothold in India about 10 years ago with sales and FAE support, and increased our presence a couple of years back with IC development activity. The company now has sales and support teams in seven cities in the country.


What are the application areas that Actel is focused on with respect to India?
Actel India’s main focus is on high reliability and industrial applications. In high reliability we have RTAX-S for space electronics, and for the industrial segment we have ProASIC 3.


How is Actel intending to enhance its market position in India?
We plan to invest consistently in our sales and FAE support, and increase our comparative product offerings. We also organized the first annual Actel Space Forum in India in April 2007 to provide designers of space systems with a user-group environment to discuss testing and qualification, software trends, design optimization techniques, advanced packaging technology, and intellectual property cores for space applications.


What are your growth forecasts for the India business?
There has been 12 to 20 percent growth in the Indian electronics industry, and we expect that our penetration will exceed that. Our India revenues have increased from $3.4 million in 2005 to $8 million in 2006. Much of it is from the space and satellite applications segment.


How does Actel intend to compete with Xilinx and Altera in the Indian market?
Our competitors are big companies and focus on certain things. We intend to do other things that will enable us to specialize and dominate.


Can you say something on the nature of strategic alliances that you are planning with Indian companies?
Our company partnered with Qualcore a couple of years back in India to do IC development work. Qualcore did one of the hardest parts of our Fusion product, and we plan to expand our relationship with the company. We have also partnered with Ishnatek Systems and Services Pvt Ltd, and Reanu Microelectronics Pvt Ltd for design activities. We continue to look for other design service companies with application expertise to build full applications around our chips. We expect to attract more partners over time in this part of the world.


What will be the trends in PLD technology over the next 24 months?
According to Gartner, the PLD market is expected to grow to $6.8 billion in 2010. In my view, more specialization, lower power consumption and smaller space are the key trends. Products like our Igloo—an extremely low power PLD/FPGA for portable applications—will be best suited to meet this trend. In fact, we are the top supplier of PLDs to India.