Taiwan seeks India tie-up for chip design and SW

"When I go to China and Taiwan, people ask when we will have a R&D
and design center and when I am here in India, they ask me when we will have a
manufacturing unit," Flextronics Chief Michael Marks quipped when he
visited India in February this year. Recounting this, Philips Software center,
India chief Bob Hoekstra highlighted the strengths of India and Taiwan at the
Nasscom meet on system-on-chip in Bangalore, which tried to explore
possibilities for collaboration between Taiwan and India in the area of embedded
software.

Taiwan SoC Consortium President Steve Lin said that the Taiwanese
semi-conductor industry sought Indian expertise in areas like reusable protocol
stacks in wireless and broadband; multimedia and embedded software in the
digital consumer space, next generation memory development and next generation
processor technology.

The semi-conductor industry in Taiwan is valued at $11.7 billion and
contributes to 30% of the world market, he said. He said that digital consumer
devices contributed to 40% of the semi-conductor industry and expected it to
grow further.

On the SoC market trends, Lin said, "SoC will be the next battleground
for semi-conductor design. The industry is moving towards smaller, power saving,
affordable, rich and intelligent systems." He also informed that the Taiwan
Si-soft program planned to make Taiwan a SoC design hub.

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