LSI Corporation (NYSE: LSI) is an electronics company based in Milpitas, California that designs semiconductors and softwares that accelerate storage and networking in datacenters and mobile networks. Santhanakrishnan Raman, MD, LSI India R&D shares his thoughts on the opportunities he is betting on.

What’s the biggest driver for LSI today?

LSI, as you know focuses on storage and networking market. In these two markets, we are the most trusted provider of technologies and are leading the way for companies. The key word here is trust. When we deliver our products to leading OEMs, we have to make sure the delivery is on time, with the highest levels of quality. The products that we deliver have a life of 7 to 10 years. It takes time for trust to be established within your customers and this happens when make sure that we not only enhance the features of a product, but also ensure reliability and quality. Talking about trends, we are now focusing on the wireless infrastructure, because the new industries are very dynamic with newer technologies deployed. So, in terms of challenges, I would say our focus has always been higher complexity, lower power, and better features from a product point of view. In terms of product behavior, we look at products being early to market and those with high quality and reliability How is India as a market today, for LSI?

India is definitely a growth area. There is a lot of demand for data and storage, which is fueling a tremendous amount of growth. The semiconductor association is projecting that by 2020 the semi-con industry alone will be worth $40 billion. So, it sure is a huge market and there is a big consumption that is projected. Hence, the more India and China grow, the more growth we see. This in turn is a positive sign for us.

What are the technology trends you are seeing today? How is LSI positioned there?

We supply leading technology to our customers who are participating in these trends in a big way. For example, if we look at the infrastructure of cloud computing and the deployment of these large data centers and also the public and private cloud, there is a tremendous amount of storage and networking infrastructure that goes into that. And that exactly is where LSI’s focus is on. We always look at how we can differentiate the products and solutions here in LSI.

What are the interesting activities that are happening in R&D center here?

When we talk about semi-con industry we are not just talking about silicon chips alone, but there are other aspects also involved in it. There is a significant amount of firmware and multiple players of software that goes with it. When comparing these solutions we develop today, as to what was being done earlier, there is a huge amount of complexity that is seen. And this brings challenges in terms of design, the ability to comprehend, verification, validation, and making sure it is doing what it is supposed to do. And definitely LSI is engaged in doing such leading edge product developments. To design a product that successfully and reliably runs for many years, are the engineering challenges we see in LSI.

The innovative spirit continues to be nurtured in India. One of the unique things that we are doing in LSI is a patent initiative across all the teams in India. Here we lay continuous emphasis on why it is important to disclose patents, which helps companies to maintain the product leadership and how it helps the overall growth of the company. So, we need great talents, as great talents develop great products. It feels great to be surrounded by lot of smart people at LSI, where we get to learn a lot from them. With technology becoming more and more complex, the ability to grasp the things is going to be determined by the technological exchanges we make. That’s what we would like to experience in LSI.