Raza Micro announces Indian operations

US-based Raza Microelectronics Inc (RMI) has announced the
formal launch of RMI's operations in Bangalore. Started in 2002, RMI develops
chips for networking and telecom equipment such as routers, switches and
security devices. It was started by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Atiq Raza, who
previously held positions as CEO of NexGen and subsequently COO and president of
AMD.

The company currently has a team of 16 engineers in India,
which works on the company's processor lines- XLR family of thread processors
and Orion family of intelligent access processors. "We have been in India
for a year and we want to build a world class team here and integrate the
Bangalore team with our team in the US," said Chairman and CEO of RMI, Atiq
Raza.

He added that he is keen on building a sizable quality team
in India eventually. He did not reveal details of the company's investment
plans or the scale of operations. Atiq also said that
the company was keen on working with Indian equipment
manufacturers.

Investors like Warburg Pincus, Benchmark Capital, Kodiak and
DAG Ventures are backing RMI, which hopes to give rival biggies like Broadcom,
PMC-Sierra and others a run for their money. Raza claims that RMI has managed to
pack more transistors (333 million) onto its XLR processor thus beating Intel's
Dothan processor, which has 180 million transistors.

He said that customers could save a lot on cost in terms of
replacement of multiple chips, managing supply chain and reducing risk. The
company is eyeing networking and telecom equipment manufacturers in China and
the US as potential customers.

The XLR multicore chip, which can power switches, routers and telecom
infrastructure, can run 32 applications simultaneously. RMI presently has around
130 people working out of the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California.

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