The Embedded Chieftains Date:   Thursday , January 06, 2011 The semiconductor space has continuously evolved in India with significant contributions from the different sects – individuals, companies, institutes. There are crucial success stories which have transformed the stumbling blocks into stepping stones driven by their passion, determination and undying spirit of entrepreneurship. It is to honor those success streaks and recognize the business leaders of tomorrow within the Embedded/ VLSI industry that Mentor Graphics and SiliconIndia jointly instituted the SiliconIndia – Mentor Graphics Leadership Awards. Best VLSI/ Embedded Design Established Indian company - HCL This $2.5 billion global IT services company, HCL, has a very strong product engineering services focus which has contributed nearly 20 percent of the company revenue. The Engineering and R&D Services (ERS) group has about 12000 strong engineering team servicing customers across domains like Aerospace, Automotive, Medical devices, Consumer Electronics and Telecom. This group has a very vibrant system design practice that includes ASIC design across eight verticals and 30 designs over the last 15 months. Formation of the test lab and other initiatives like Joint venture with a leading EMS company has enabled HCL to offer comprehensive Concept to Manufacturing solutions (C2M) to leading OEM companies. Best Electronic System Design company - Established Indian company Tejas Networks We are witnessing an explosive growth in telecom over the last couple of years. One of the key enablers of this is a Bangalore-based company, Tejas Networks, which provides innovative optical networking solutions ensuring high quality telecom services available to over half a billion people at the world’s most affordable prices. The company has built complex networking products using the latest semiconductor technologies as well as design tools to not only reduce the system costs, but also gain a time-to-market advantage. The company is a true testament of what a product company based in India can do to serve the highly competitive domestic market and at the same time produce high quality, leading-edge products relevant to the rest of the world. Best VLSI/ Embedded Design – MNC: Qualcomm The company is a leader in next-generation mobile technologies. It is the largest provider of wireless chipset and software technology, which powers the majority of all 3G devices commercially available today. The charter for the company’s Bangalore Design Center is to provide highly integrated chipset solutions that allow the latest wireless devices to offer more features and smaller, sleeker designs that use significantly less power. Qualcomm’s engineers collaborate with other companies’ design centers across the globe, to deliver complete system solutions – including reference designs, software and applications - that reduce device manufacturers’ materials costs and development time, while speeding new products’ time-to-market. Best VLSI/ Embedded Design Startup - Cosmic Circuits This Bangalore-based company provides Analog and Mixed-Signal silicon IP cores. A large team of designers, whose experience and expertise in creating complex analog IP is unmatched. They have built a strong portfolio of more than 250 cores in nanometer process nodes of leading foundries. Outstanding Contribution to VLSI/ Embedded Design Industry - academic institution: IIT Kharagpur This academic institution has unique expertise in advanced chip design and CAD for VLSI. The institute’s Advanced VLSI Design Lab has been involved in research in niche areas like formal verification, RF, MEMS, analog CAD and medical electronics. More than 50 PhD students have graduated in these areas and about 40 more PhD students are currently enrolled in these areas. The institute takes pride in taping out nearly 90 chips in the last decade, which is considered significant by any standards. Award for Youngest Entrepreneur in Semiconductor space -Notion Ink Team They are a three year old Bangalore based company. Alumni of IIT, Kharagpur, a team of 24 year olds, Rohan Shravan, Rohit Rathi and Sachin Ralhan, they have a dream to design devices which can do anything, pushing computing devices towards singularity. And that’s what they are doing right now. The first thing you do to realize your dream is to write it somewhere. And that’s what they will help others to do with the first ever ebook reader and tablet, ADAM, that they showcased at the ‘Consumer Electronics Forum’ at Las Vegas last year. Having got rave reviews from there, they are all set to take on the world. Best Electronic System Design company -MNC : Cisco Led by Senior Vice President and General Manager Pankaj Patel, the Service Provider Business Group (SPB) of Cisco generates nearly $10 billion in annual revenues for this company. SPB-India is around 1000 people strong and develops a set of products like core routing products, optical switching products and access technology for service providers (operators). In the recent past this group has overseen major product launches, including the ASR 9000 and the CRS-3 core router. While the Group does recognize there is a lot of value silicon providers bring to the table, it designs its own chips too. They had launched the QuantumFlow processor that sits in its router family of products. Best Electronic System Design company – Startup- Redpine Signals Founded in 2001, Redpine Signals was the first in the industry to launch an ultra low power and low-cost single-stream 802.11n Wi-Fi chipset in late 2007. The company offers chipsets, modules and solutions covering multiple market segments including industrial, consumer electronics, medical, mobile, PC, and smart energy. With 95 of its 110 employees based in Hyderabad, all aspects of system & software design, customer applications and adaptation to customer environment — all carried out of the India center for its global customers. Of the 53 patents filed from this center, 19 have been granted. What’s its USP? Well, majority of the engineers who work at the Hyderabad center are handpicked from campuses like IIT Madras, IIT Gauhati and BITS Pilani. VLSI/ Embedded Design Industry - Corporate - Wipro Technologies Although Wipro’s R&D services arm initially focused on client-driven product engineering, it has come a long way. Today it’s a leader in spotting technological opportunities, optimizing processes, managing effective New Product Development, and driving project-to-project learning. It is a hotbed of New Product Development learning that is likely to provide a lot of managerial lessons for the future. The third party R&D services provider started with product development for the Indian market and moved into R&D services for the global market providing VLSI design embedded software and complete product development services. The product engineering services business serves customers across telecom, computing, peripherals, semiconductor, automotive, industrial and medical segments. Outstanding Contribution to VLSI/ Embedded Design Industry – Individual: Dr. Bobby Mitra, President & Managing Director, Texas Instruments India Bobby Mitra, the ardent believer of ‘once-in-a-generation’ opportunity has been instrumental in playing a pioneering role in creating the India semiconductor ecosystem – with key partnerships with the industry and the academia. Under his leadership, Texas Instruments has established partnerships with over 650 engineering colleges in India. Today he is actively involved in creating the India Electronic Ecosystem. Bobby leads several activities of the Indian semiconductor industry as the President of the VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) Society of India. As amember of the Executive Council of NASSCOM & Chairman of India Semiconductor Association (ISA), he plays an active role in several key policies and directions. VLSI/ Embedded Awards Best VLSI/ Embedded Design - MNC Qualcomm Best VLSI/ Embedded Design Established Indian company HCL Best VLSI/ Embedded Design Startup Cosmic Circuits Best Electronic System Design company -MNC Cisco Best Electronic System Design company - Established Indian company Tejas Networks Best Electronic System Design company - Startup Redpine Signals Award for Youngest Entrepreneur in Semiconductor space Notion Ink Team (Rohan Shravan, Rohit Rathi and Sachin Ralhan) Outstanding Contribution to VLSI/ Embedded Design Industry - Corporate Wipro Outstanding Contribution to VLSI/ Embedded Design Industry - academic institution IIT Kharagpur Outstanding Contribution to VLSI/ Embedded Design Industry - Individual Dr. Bobby Mitra, President & MD of TI India