Freescale Semiconductor has R&D centres in Noida, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, employing more than a thousand highly skilled professionals who play a significant part in delivering innovative products. Freescale India has been leading many important projects. It contributed immensely to the 360-degree surround-view parking assistance system launched recently, and also to small cell development for femto and pico base stations in the networking market.
4. Infineon India
Infineon India has a well established global R&D centre set up in Bengaluru. The company is a global semiconductor innovator in energy efficiency, mobility and security, employing around 280 professionals in India. Infineon’s business spans from automotive electronics semiconductor solutions for power train and safety in two- and four-wheel vehicles, and chip card and security solutions for ePassport, citizen cards and drivers’ licences to industrial and multi-market sector solutions for electronic ballasts, power supplies, and solar and wind energy conversion.
The R&D centre plays an essential role in software and hardware development for global products. Software development projects involve all layers from low-level software design to high-level application software and complex configuration software, whereas hardware design involves complex system-on-chip verification and validation and design automation systems (design flow and design libraries).
Infineon India plays a leading role in global automotive software strategy development such as automotive network standards, automotive open system architecture (AUTOSAR), automotive safety and electric vehicle motor control. Smart card operating systems and applications is another major area of R&D at Infineon India.
New chip designs are verified and validated to ensure full and perfect compliance to specification and delivered to the market within tight consumer windows. Parts of complex chip design flows and methodologies that reduce chip development time and ensure first-time right silicon are addressed.
5. Intel India
Intel India is Intel’s largest non-manufacturing site outside of the US and considered a microcosm of Intel with the presence of major business groups. Having started its sales office in 1988 and R&D activities in 1999, Intel India has grown from less than 200 employees in 2000 to over 3000 employees now. A majority of these employees are in R&D. The Intel R&D centre in Bengaluru is spread across three facilities.
Intel India has made significant contributions through its engineering capability in silicon design, validation and systems software to a number of Intel Xeon server products and integrated graphics for clients. It is engaged in a range of software projects in server management, ultra-mobile, graphics, IT applications and factory automation. It also has a dedicated innovation team named Ideas to Reality Group (I2R), started in 2007, focusing on developing Intel architecture based solutions for the emerging markets.
Intel recently announced the availability of Intel Xeon processor E7 family (formerly codenamed Eagleton)—Intel’s first ten-core processor with 30 MB of L3 cache memory and 2.9 billion transistors. Intel India team based in Bengaluru jointly led the design of the Intel Xeon processor E7 family, in collaboration with other teams in the US, Malaysia, Mexico and Costa Rica.
Intel India is working on the design and validation of next-generation server chips, and development of next-generation integrated graphics for clients. It’s also working on the development of system-on-chip platforms for mobile phones. In addition, it is involved in throughput computing research and frugal innovation.
“The work we do here is significant and sizeable; one is looking at solving critical problems which can change Intel products and the other is end-to-end or complete ownership of the platform. India will also have a role to play when it comes to our future success in tablets and phones. Apart from that, we have parallel computing research work being done out of here. A core team of people is doing local market innovation like the Atom-based universal handheld device which has a biometric, printer, GPRS and an integrated smartcard reader,” informs Jitendra Chaddah, director, Intel India Strategic Development & Operations.
6. Nokia
Nokia has three R&D centres in India, one each in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderabad. The centres are focused on next-generation packet-switched mobile technologies and communication solutions to enhance corporate productivity. While all the three centres are an integral part of Nokia’s global R&D infrastructure and therefore work on global projects, these centres do play a pivotal role in assimilating local flavours from the market and act as a conduit for information to the global product development teams. Currently, Nokia has 1000 people working on various R&D projects.
Of the three centres, the Bengaluru R&D centre is the largest Nokia site in India. It was established in 2001 with the acquisition of Amber Networks. Over the years, it has played a pivotal role in the development of new applications, software platforms and chipsets for high-end Nokia mobile devices. The software platform group works on development of parts of the base services for the platform, application frameworks, user interfaces and test tools. On the chipset side, the work done in India is mainly in the areas of ASIC design, hardware design, integration and verification, protocol software design and integration, speech and video codec design and integration.
