BANGALORE, INDIA: Karnataka's semiconductor industry has witnessed much progress in the recent years, said Ashok Kumar Manoli, Principal Secretary IT, Biotechnology, S&T, Karnataka.

“We are proud of the fact that 80 per cent of the complete chip design from the country comes from Karnataka. ESC will definitely pave the way for more business opportunities and this is the reflection of the strength of this conference,” he said while inaugurating the Embedded Systems Conference India 2010, which began here today.

The highlight of the event was the CXO Panel discussion on “India Design Houses: More of the same?” aimed at Senior Management and Engineers from Embedded industry.

The participants in the panel discussion included M. A. Mohamed Saliya, co-founder, iWave Systems Technologies, Shailesh Thakurdesai, business development manager, Microcontrollers, Texas Instruments India, and Sudhir Sathiyamoorthy, AGM, Business Development, Technology Practice, Infotech Enterprises.

The discussion revolved around the nature and future of Indian design, how enterprises can move up the design value chain, the untapped areas of design that we can focus on and expectations that MNC companies have from Indian partners to help them tap into new markets and market segments.

Ganesh Moorthy, chief operating officer, Microchip Technology Inc delivered the keynote address on the topic "Opportunities in the Emerging Smart Energy Market".

The partners for the 4th Annual ESC India include Actel, Altera, Altium, American Mega Trend, Dexcel Electronics Design, Farnell, Green Hills Software, IBM, Intel, Klocwork, LDRA, Microchip Technology, National Instruments, PCB Power, Sankhya Technologies, Serena Software, STMicroelectronics, Tektronix, Texas Instruments, Vector Informatik and Xilinx.