CIOL: How do you look at India? How advanced is the T&M space?

NN: Embedded is booming in India. The India Semiconductor Association (ISA) and market researcher Frost & Sullivan have projected that the Indian semiconductor and embedded design industry will grow from $3.25 billion in 2005 to $14.42 billion in 2010 and to $43.07 billion in 2015.

In 2010, when India's design services, growing at a CAGR of 21.7 per cent, are projected to reach $10.96 billion, the embedded services industry will contribute 82 per cent, or $8.91 billion in revenue. With more and more telecommunications, consumer, computer, industrial and automotive products evolve toward the embedded, system-on-chip design and development model, India is poised to become a more critical link in the global electronics design chain.

India plays a major role in the embedded design starting from 4-bit to 32-bit microcontrollers and is especially competitive in digital design, embedded software development, integration, verification and validation.

A large and growing pool of English-speaking, globally trained computer scientists and electrical engineers, with technology know-how and professional network links to Silicon Valley, fuels India's intellectual infrastructure and helps India move beyond simple labour-cost arbitrage to product innovation.

CIOL: What are the emerging trends in this space and what will drive the demand for MSOs?

NN: The “Pervasive electronics’ mega trend in the meanwhile is leading to increased usage and emphasis on embedded systems. Here is a quick outline of the trend’s impact in select industries from where demand is coming form.

Consumer electronics: Increasing design complexity is driving the consumer electronics industry to greater use of embedded systems. From advanced multi-function mobile telephones to digital televisions, devices such as computers, microprocessors, or other electronic components such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and transmission electronics are embedded within these applications.

Industrial electronics: Factory automation, process controls, power generation and management, security and environmental monitoring all rely on embedded electronic systems. Business needs ranging from quality, cost reduction, efficient operations, data and information management are driving wider uses of electronic control and management systems.

Automotive: It is estimated that about 25 per cent of the value of a modern car lies in the electronics. This is further estimated to increase to about 40 per cent by 2010. The average new car comes with more than a dozen microprocessors inside, controlling everything from the engine to the radio. Some high-end models include more than 100 microprocessors and microcontrollers.

Avionics: Embedded electronics are widely deployed in aircraft in areas such as cockpit instrumentation, air data, inertial systems, engine control, electrical power generation, hydraulics, fuel systems, autopilot, navigation, GPS, ILS, landing gear, flying surfaces, slats, flaps, etc. Innovations continue; for example, new fully automated adaptive rotor systems within helicopters are able to reduce noise on take-off and landing and also reduce vibration during flight.

Medical: Embedded systems are widely used for patient monitoring and diagnostics, in operating rooms and within technical devices such as MRI and PET scanners. Surgical robots may soon take a place in operating rooms. ‘System on a chip’ (SOC) integrated technology has recently been used to create a chemical and biological laboratory capable of carrying out analysis at the point of care, without having to wait one or two days for laboratory results. In a ‘non-technical’ application, an artificial leg employing embedded systems can operate in unison with the biological leg.

Communications: Examples of embedded technologies abound in the communications industry, driven by the merging of traditional analog with newer digital technologies, shifts from conventional voice and time-division multiplexing (TDM) based networks towards multimedia networks integrating voice and data including video, into areas such as global positioning and tracking.

Network processors are increasingly being used in switches, gateways, routers and other communications equipment such as security and control plane processors to manage performance, power consumption, traffic management, and other embedded functions. Increasingly, too, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) chips are being embedded throughout networks.