Analog design alive and growing in India

Sufia Tippu, EE Times
(04/08/2008 5:37 PM EDT)

BENGALURA, India — A decade ago, Anand Valavi had an idea for starting an analog design group at his company, Wipro Technologies, where he worked as an ASIC engineer. Analog, he thought, could be strategic for India as well as his company, which was trying to develop a portfolio of silicon blocks for licensing.

"At that time, newspaper articles were saying there weren't 40 analog engineers in all of India," predicting the shortfall would impede the growth of the country's semiconductor business, Valavi said.

Three years ago, Wipro executives finally decided Valavi was right and hired him back from a job at Microsoft in the United States to found the new group. Today Valavi heads a 150-person analog group at Wipro, arguably one of the largest in the rapidly emerging country.

"It took nearly 10 years [for Wipro] to be at the leading edge of digital design, but with this analog effort, we couldn't wait that long," he said in an interview in his office here.