Chip design promises to be the next chapter in the unfolding saga of India’s global ascendance. It had earlier been a domain of big-players in semiconductors production, but the appearance of ‘Fabless’ model changed the industry permanently.

The model separated the capital-intensive fabrication phase from the people-intensive design phase with ASIC companies offering design, verification and physical design and manufacturing services, and the creation of stand-alone foundries by Taiwanese semiconductor companies.

This opened the doors for a number of small companies, which had the talent but not the required capital, and also for countries like India to get into chip design.

The market opportunity is large and growing with more and more chips finding their way into different appliances. The ASIC design services market globally is estimated at $50 billion in 2006, while the embedded software market size is put at $25 billion.

India has been quick to tap into this opportunity. India’s share of global market is still small but growing rapidly.

In fact it is estimated to be growing at double the pace of application software industry. According to the ISA/Frost & Sullivan report, Indian electronics production which was worth $10.99 billion in 2005 is expected to reach $58 billion by 2010 with a compounded annual growth (CAGR) rate of 26.4 pc.

India is witnessing huge growth in the chip design segment to cater to the domestic and MNC electronic equipment manufacturers.

The growth of semiconductor industry in India has been driven by US chip companies setting up their own captive design centres and the evolution of IP leveraged design services firms that provide design services to chip-makers who are increasingly outsourcing their chip designing activity.

There are currently around 150 chip design and 250 embedded system players in India and more and more companies are eyeing this potential market. With the growth of chip design services, the development and replenishment of a vibrant talent pool has acquired critical importance and the demand for chip designers has shot up in the last two years.

In demand

According to Indian Semiconductor Association (ISA), over the next two years, chip design services, which currently have around 12,000 engineers, will require additional 20,000 engineers. In addition about 2,000 technicians and 1,500 support staff are needed each year to support the manufacturing sector.

According to semiconductor market research reports launched by India Semiconductor Association (ISA) and Frost & Sullivan, the semiconductor-driven industry is expected to create over 3.5 million jobs by 2015.

The job of an IC design engineer varies from architecture, logic design, circuit design, physical design, to testing and verification. The architecture team is at the conceptual level of designing the chip. The logic design team then implements the defined design in a high-level language.

The circuit design team synthesises the logic description into a circuit, producing a document referred to as a “netlist.” The physical design team takes the netlist and performs a “layout” of the chip. Then comes testing and verification.

Based on the inclination of fresh engineers and their skill sets, they take up variety of roles from designing to verification of complex SoC. Verification of complex SoCs provides a sounding base for engineers to move to design or reinforce their career in verification & testing.

Domain knowledge

The basic skill required for a chip designer varies depending on the domain that one desires to specialise in, but in general strong background in electrical/electronics engineering and computer engineering is essential. Since the advances in VLSI happen at a rapid pace, ability to quickly and continuously learn is a must.

In terms of specific skills, knowledge in following areas is required: digital design fundamentals, VHDL/Verilog, simulation and synthesis tools, computer architecture.

To deal with the dearth of chip designers some companies are tying up with institutes offering training in chip design. If you do not have enough experience, you can take up a short-term course.

Institutes like Bitmapper Integration Technologies Pvt Ltd in Pune provides courses for VLSI designers and Centre for Development of Advance Computing (CDAC - Bangalore) offers Diploma in Embedded design systems.

Soft skills required

Besides technical skills, it is equally important for an individual to work on enhancing his/her soft skills. Cross cultural work environments, demanding customers, deadlines and expanded job roles have made it imperative for employees to possess skills that go beyond just technical expertise.

Effective communication skills, interpersonal skills, problem solving abilities, customer orientation etc are important for an individual to succeed in their roles.

The writer is is HR Head at eInfochips, a chip design services company. Email: smita.sah@einfochips.com