Consumer expectations rise with tech integration

The seamless integration of technologies at home, office, car and recreation is making consumers more demanding. Focus is now more on consumer expectations. This has increased the need for the industry to cut costs and time to market them.

Speaking at the seminar on 'Embedded Softwares and Systems', A L Rao, COO, Wipro Limited said customers have changed into active innovators. This has made the process of innovation flexible. To meet the market requirements and cut costs, the once vertically-integrated industry, has disaggregated into various verticals like Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs), semiconductor IP companies, foundries, EDA tool providers and design services companies.

He said that the key to success is the "follow the sun" development model. This allows handing over of the work in progress across various sites at the end or beginning of their respective shifts. This creates a continuous engineering environment and cuts down the delivery time.

Another important thing for the companies, according to Rao, is standardisation. The consumer expectations like high performance, low power consumption, lesser time to market, increased device integration, low cost and easy to use functions requires the convergence between industry standard architecture and reusable design. There is also a need for complete and timely implementation.

Software will be the core of any chip. "Now there is a computer in everything and only a fraction of the microprocessors manufactured are used in PCs," he said. The core to any architecture is the software and this is evident from the fact that software now makes up almost 50 per cent of the design cost.

Software together with the timeline goals has led to the development of system-on-chip (SoC). The growth of SoC component in the new end and next generation devices has led to a higher SoC average selling price (ASP) than standard chip. He said that the SoC market is growing annually at 18.4 per cent and will reach $2.2 billion by 2009.

He said that the key market drivers will be new companies and technologies, upgraded enhancements and expansion of internet infrastructure, newer microprocessor architecture, cutting-edge wireless and wired devices and protocols, new operating systems and latest tool for for software and ASIC development.

For this, he said, the attitude of IP should be to share and expand and the relationship between various verticals should be symbiotic. Emphasising that India is the best place for prototyping and R&D as it has a holistic ecosystem, a successful global delivery model, a proven quality process and a vast talent pool. "Gradually we are improving the information security and thereby reducing the risk factor for those considering offshore outsourcing," he said.