India urged to take advantage of semicon industry transition

Silicon Valley based Dr Suhas Patil has played a key role in mentoring and fostering product start-ups in both India and the US. He took the academia route to high-tech industry. Dr Patil taught at the MIT before he moved to the University of Utah. During this stint from 1975 to 1980, he founded a very large scale integration group. In 1981, he founded Patil Systems Inc. to develop software for automated integrated circuit design. Three years later, Dr Patil, in company of Michael Hackworth, founded Cirrus Logic.





At the recently held India Semiconductor Association (ISA) Vision Summit in Bangalore, CyberMedia News caught up with Dr Patil, now the chairman of Digité Inc., a privately held technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California. He spoke to Priya Padmanabhan the problems, prospects and challenges for the industry. Excerpts from the interview:





You have mentioned that India should take advantage of the industry transition. Can you elaborate?







There is a major transition going on in the industry. Unlike before when the chip did not have much embedded software, and hardware was everything, the scenario has completely changed today. Now there is the basic chip and one needs to execute embedded software and adjust the actual characteristics as standards and technologies change. The contribution of software is substantial now. The opportunity now is that the chip is not just hardware or software, but a whole solution. Software has moved beyond being incidental to figure in the frontline. Given India's expertise in software, it is the easiest access to the software products business.





What is your take on India being pushed as a fab destination?







It is good to have a certain level of activity. I feel that a flexible fab would be a good option. With this, you could have a major player take 75% of the fab's manufacturing capacity while the rest can be utilized for all kinds of products.





There should be a compelling economic reason for it to work. Otherwise it would be of no use.





Would you see a lot of start-ups in the semi-conductor space emerging out of India?







Right now, the Indian industry is dominated by services. Getting into products in the semiconductor space requires a lot of risk, and upfront investment. Much more venture capital is needed in this area. I'm sure product companies will emerge as a natural consequence independently or with risk capital.











What are the industry challenges that need to be addressed in India?







The biggest challenge for the industry is to retain people. There is a lot of job-hopping in the industry and it becomes difficult for companies when engineers leave. Secondly, the overall quality of engineering education has the tremendous risk of falling low because the volume of knowledge has increased. At the same time, there is a lot of disparity in terms of compensation for University professors. The ministry of Human Resources must tackle this issue because it could affect the industry.