China looks to partner with India in chip design
By agencies   |   Monday, 11 April 2005, 19:30 IST
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BANGALORE:India may be lagging behind in semiconductor manufacturing, but the software expertise that helps design new generation chips of the world has caught the attention of rival China. Visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in an interaction with government officials stressed the need for China to improve its software expertise, but more importantly a need to collaborate with India in the chip space. Most of the world's biggest chip makers like Texas Instruments, Intel and AMD have their R &D units in India, employing hundreds of engineers to design their next generation chip. It is not just costs, but also the availability of quality manpower that design and build software for the chips, used in diverse fields as consumer electronics to missiles and rockets. "Wen was keen to explore partnership with India in chip design," Karnataka IT Secretary M K Shankaralinge Gowda said after an interaction by Chief Minister Dharam Singh. Interestingly, China is one of the few countries that have chip-fabricating units in the world, dishing out millions of ICs used in consumer goods globally.

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