NEW DELHI: The embedded systems R&D activity out of India has touched $ 462 million in 2001 and it is expected to grow to $ 1,502 million in the next three years, according to a Frost and Sullivan study. This is, however, just a minuscule portion of the global market of the $25 billion opportunity that is waiting to be tapped. And it is with this intention to spread awareness about the huge opportunity that the VLSI Society of India along with Nasscom, IEEE Circuits & Systems Society and the ACM Interest Group organized the International Conference on VLSI design in New Delhi.

Delivering the keynote address, Rajiv C Mody, Chairman and CEO of Sasken Communication Technologies said that various factors like the convergence in the consumer market, in computing and communication technologies and in industrial applications were driving the embedded systems market.

With a billion-dollar market waiting to be explored, India is well positioned to pick up a sizeable stake of that market. What with shifting paradigms of tight R&D budgets, managing multiple technologies, mantra of core competencies and extended product cycles, Indian companies can well pitch for any of the global projects. Indian companies have already carved a niche in the world market with its display of technical skill, domain knowledge, access to a large talent pool and an established working relationship with many leading global companies. The challenge now for India is to create vertical domain expertise, build hardware competencies and increase spending on core R&D.

In this regard, Mody urged Indian companies to build and protect its IP, establish linkage between hardware design and software expertise out of India and chart out aggressive roadmap for product development.

Manoj Gandhi, Senior VP, Synopsys pointed out that China is an emerging competitor in this space of developing embedded systems and India needs to brace itself for the competition some years down the line. He said that the Chinese government has nurtured a hundred start-ups focussed on core development of chip design systems.

Gandhi warned that although the Indian government has a tie-up with Synopsys to provide development tools to educational institutions and impart training on the tools, more concrete action needs to be pursued in order to beat the anticipated competition from China.