India favourite R&D hub for semicon players

India has become the favourite R&D hub for many semiconductor players including Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom and NXP, along with electronics design automation firms such as Mentor Graphics, Cadence and Synopsys. Texas Instruments, which had a special interest in simple analogue design, started small. It created software to automate chip design 25 years back. Currently, its India research wing has become the company’s largest R&D centre outside the US, designing chips end-to-end. In this new paradigm, India stands to gain as the country has always been strong on software, and with more software creeping into chip designs, India’s competency in this field will be leveraged.