China, India outspending U.S. in semiconductors

Rick Merritt, EETimes
3/19/2013 2:01 AM EDT

China and India will separately announce plans to invest billions in semiconductors this year, moves Cadence CEO Lip-Bu Tan says he wish the U.S. would make. SANTA CLARA, Calif. – The governments of China and India will each announce plans to pump billions of dollars into their semiconductor industries this year, said Lip-Bu Tan, the chief executive of Cadence Design Systems Inc. and a veteran investor, bemoaning the decline of U.S. venture capital funding for chips.

In a roundtable with tech journalists before his keynote at the annual CDN Live event here, Tan shared his opinions on the lack of startups, the rising cost of chip design and the need to reposition the EDA industry for growth.

“China and India are pouring money” into semiconductors and “the U.S. government should do the same,” said Tan. If it doesn’t, some day U.S. engineers “will have to go to China to work, and its painful to see your kids go to the other side of the world,” he said.

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