Xilinx yearns for wireless communications market in India

 

            A player in the programmable logic devices (PLD) market, California-based Xilinx Inc, has foreseen a lot of prospects in the wireless communications market in India, especially with regards to Wimax and IPTV. They have been catering to wireline communications, aerospace and defence, in addition to industrial and medical verticals in the country.

            Some days back, Krishna Rangasayee, the senior director of vertical markets and partnerships Xilinx Inc, said this "We are targeting the booming wireless communication and networking market in India. Though IPTV technology is in its initial stage in the country, India is expected to be the fastest-growing markets for this technology and we see growth opportunities in this arena too, in one or two years down the line."

            Xilinx, which is worth $2 billion has various projects at hand. It has already tied up with companies that use its programmable chips to develop technology for equipment and implement wimax networks. They are also at different levels of negotiation with other companies too. Right now, they are in the process of developing their Hyderabad centre, which is its largest facility outside the US, into a global R&D hub. According to Mallik Moturi, the managing director of Xilinx, they are now building a systems and applications development, and customer support teams, as part of this program.

            As of now, the Hyderabad centre has developed 60 full product development lifecycle of intellectual property (IP) cores which includes gigabit ethernet, networking, automotive and process-related cores.

            Mallik further stated that, "The Hyderabad centre currently employs about 100 high-end design engineers and we plan to increase the strength of the R&D manpower here to 300 in the next couple of years."

            "On the company's $75-million Asia Pacific venture capital fund, which was designed to seek opportunities to invest in companies in the Asia region including India, Xilinx was planning to invest in companies that are creating innovative applications based on programmable logic". Rangasayee said

            He also added that, "Investment opportunities are all there and Xilinx is currently evaluating a couple of them. It will take a year or so to finalise the investments."