India Emerging Global Design Hub

When Texas Instruments became the first multinational company to set up operations in India in 1985, it was heralding an era that was to catapult India to a place in the sun in the global design industry. Initially TI India developed EDA software systems for IC design. One success led to another. TI India set up a mixed-signal IC design center in 1989, an ASIC design center in 1990, DSP design center in 1995, leading to the successful launch of first DSP designed entirely by Indian engineers in 1998. In 2001 TI India launched Pyramid, an SoC design system for use with 130nm and 90nm libraries.

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The TI India story of starting design activities in a small way and gradually moving forward to the high-end has been repeated often. For instance, STMicro started design in India in 1988, and has now made India one of the most important design and development centers in the world. Presently STMicro has 1,500 design engineers in India; in a couple of years this number will grow to 5,000.

Almost all MNCs have design centers in India, besides, there are an estimated 150 to 200 Indian design houses. These design houses carry on a range of activities in areas such as ASIC solutions, advanced design and verification IP, physical design services, FPGA design, embedded solutions and services, application development, system migration, SoC solutions, etc.

With an estimated EDA tool market size of $100 million out of global revenue of $4 billion, India has still not matured to be a leading EDA tool user. However, EDA tool consumption is rising rapidly, growing at 15 to 20 percent p.a. This growth is interesting in view of the fact that global EDA tool market size has been stagnating around $4 billion for the last five years.

This supplement takes a look at the design capabilities of India. Through a series of articles written by our staff and design experts, we examine the design activities in India, both in MNCs and local design houses, and prospects.