Intel India Development Center writes 14 invention disclosures during '01

NEW DELHI: Two-year old Intel India Development Center (IIDC) had written 14

invention disclosures during 2001. Intel has a record of getting at least 30 per

cent of its disclosures patented. The Center at Bangalore hopes to better that

record and get at least 50 per cent of their disclosure patented.

IIDC focuses on the four areas of IA 32, servers, networking and

communications and handheld computing. This is the largest non-manufacturing

center outside USA with an employee base of 800 people. By the end of this year

the company expects to ramp up its employee base to over a 1000 people. It also

hopes to move into a swanky new office by the middle of this year built with an

approximate investment of $ 25 million.

The Center has done some innovative work in chip designing and in developing

software for routers and switches. Manni Kantipudi, Director of Center proudly

says, "This is Intel's only center developing communication switches and

routers. We do the entire cycle of the product from chip designing to mounting

it on the motherboard to developing the software to getting it validated after

manufacturing."

Other areas of interest at the Center include optimizing software

applications, Linux robustization and customer engineering services. The Center

expects to focus more on developing devices for handheld computing during the

coming years.

Kantipuddi took pains to point out that despite Intel being a hardware

company the predominant work at the Center was software. While 75 percent of the

people are developing software only 20 percent are involved in hardware

development and 5 percent in servicing customers. In fact he added that Intel

was the largest employer of software professionals with a worldwide dedicated

employee base of 50,000 software people. IIDC is not a profit center and is a

subsidiary of Intel Technologies, USA.