70-Member Team Designed nForce 600i Which Is Primarily Directed Towards Gaming And PC Enthusiasts

THE plans for a chip manufacturing facility in the country might be some distance away but certain semiconductor companies in India have come of age delivering end-to-end chip design activity. NVIDIA, a leading global player in the graphics processor technology, has completely designed a chipset from its centre in Bangalore — nForce 600i.

This chipset is the flagship product in NVIDIA’s media and communication processor directed towards the gaming and PC enthusiasts community and fits into Intel’s platform.

Sridhar Manthani, senior director, Bangalore design centre, NVIDIA, said the delivery of a complete chip, ready for manufacturing is an affirmation of the talent in the country. The activity on the chipset began about 18 months ago and it included the complete architecture, design, and testing being done out of the Bangalore centre and had about 70 people engaged in this.

Rajendra Khare, chairman, India Semiconductor Association felt that semiconductor design companies have come of age and the quality of work being done in India done by some is not very different from those in the Silicon Valley, US.

India has the presence of the leading semiconductor companies like Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments, Freescale among others. For example, Intel has close to 2,700 engineers in its Bangalore development centre, which is its largest centre outside the US. The chip major has already indicated that it would be undertaking some core development activity out of India for its future mobile computing platforms.

Manthani said the chipset will not be directed just towards the gaming and PC enthusiasts but will also be suitable for the upcoming Windows Vista operating system (OS). This OS is expected to have a high degree of graphics capability.

According to certain analysts, the importance of chip design depends on its complexity. The primary factors are the size of the chip, the numbers of transistors on it and its logical complexity. NVIDIA has now lined up plans to do similar activity in the handheld segment which would also include mobiles. It currently has around 600 people in its India operations which are present in Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad.