Global Designer: ARM boosts support to Indian design shops
By Chitra Giridhar, EDN Asia -- 8/18/2005
EDN
With ARM microprocessor cores becoming increasingly popular with Indian design houses, the Indian subsidiary of the company is stepping up its involvement in the local market. "We work directly with 50 companies, and the number is poised to grow with the introduction of technologies and tools. Nearly 2000 engineers in Bangalore and about 5000 across the country work with ARM architecture," says Atul Arora, president of the Commercial Operations-India Division of ARM Embedded Technologies Ltd.
Developers are designing ARM chips into home-electronics products, such as digital TVs and set-top boxes; mobile devices, including phones and PDAs; enterprise applications, including data-storage units, printers, and wireless LANs; and embedded systems for automotive, medical, and industrial applications. "ARM is looking to increase its partnership with Indian companies, and the ADC (ARM-Approved Design Center) program is another way to work with the local market," says Arora. ARM has four such centers in India, and a total of 11 in the Asia Pacific.
Wipro (www.wipro.com) has been working with ARM technology since 1997 and became an ADC member in 1999. Today, Wipro has a team of more than 250 ARM experts and has developed more than 50 ARM-based systems on chips, covering ARM7, 9, and 11 series using both third-party- and in-house-developed platforms. "The ADC agreement provides Wipro with early access to the entire ARM environment, enabling us to provide first-time-right designs," says A Vasudevan, vice president of the VLSI Group of Wipro Technologies.
A more recent inductee into the ADC program is MindTree Consulting (www.mindtree.com). The company has for more than three years been involved in ARM-based designs for a number of international customers. "To support our product-realization services, we decided to combine our domain knowledge and design expertise with ARM processors to expand our offerings to customers," comments SN Padmanabhan, vice president of R&D services at the company. The company is working on multiple ASSP (application-specific-standard-product) designs for customers.
ARM, www.arm.com. |
