By IANS
Bangalore : Japanese chip major NEC Electronics has chosen Indian IT bellwether Wipro Technologies for semiconductor design services, a top company official announced here Wednesday.
“Wipro has set up a dedicated engineering development centre to provide chip design services and support activities. The centre will offer front-end and backend design services and IP (intellectual property) to NEC for application-specified integrated circuits (ASICs) and micro-controllers in digital consumer and automotive areas,” NEC Electronics president and CEO Toshio Nakajima told reporters.
As one of the world’s largest manufacturers of system-on-chip (SoC), micro-controllers and discrete semiconductor solutions, the $5.9-billion NEC Electronics caters to global customers in areas like consumer electronics, and automotive and industrial systems.
With a team of 25 engineers initially, Wipro will work on various designs ranging from 150 nanometres (nm), 130 nm and 55 nm.
“As a leader in semiconductor design support services, Wipro is familiar with the requirements of global electronics industry and has a track record of delivering quality and winning solutions,” Toshio said.
Sudip Nandy, Wipro Technologies president for telecom and product engineering solutions, said the software major would leverage its vast VLSI (very large system integration) expertise with its in-house design methodology to deliver advance designs to NEC Electronics.
“As the world’s largest independent third party VLSI design services provider, our team of about 2,000 engineers help clients across Americas, Europe and Asia develop next-generation electronic products in automotive, avionics, computing, consumer, medical and industrial verticals,” Nandy said.
Having set up its India operations with a liaison office in Bangalore, NEC Electronics is scouting for similar vendor partners in the subcontinent.
“We are in talks with other design firms in India such as GDA Technologies and iWave Systems, to meet our in-house requirements as well as that of our global customers,” NEC Electronics India head Krishnan Neelakantan said.
NEC will also offer training and technical data to prospective engineers working with its third-party vendors on its design projects and its product customers in India.
NEC has recently entered into a technical tie-up with Toshiba, another Japanese electronics major, for working on 32 nm chips to rollout next-generation devices for the global market.
According to a study by Frost and Sullivan, a global market research team, electronics goods consumption in India has been growing in double digits (10-12 percent) annually since 2003 as against six-eight percent worldwide.
“The market for electronics goods in the subcontinent is estimated to grow to $350 billion by 2015 from $150 billion in 2010,” the study said.
NEC will also work with local vendors (partners and system integrators) to design and develop products for the Indian market spanning digital consumers, set-top-boxes, automotive, home appliances, UPS (uninterrupted power supply) battery systems and energy meters.