An AIM Research report released this month on the state of the semiconductor industry in India in 2023 highlights some interesting findings. For example, semiconductor companies with 101-500 employees had a higher market share (41%) than semiconductor companies with 501-1000 employees (30%).
Further research reveals that the majority of companies with relatively few employees are service-based, including Tata Elxsi, Capgemini, Tech Mahindra and Accenture. Meanwhile, companies with more employees, such as Siemens, Samsung, AMD, Qualcomm, and Intel, have set up R&D centers in India to develop their products locally.
AI Impact on Chip Design
The fact that SMEs hold a large market share shows that many companies abroad are outsourcing chip design to India. There are reasons for this, such as securing human resources and cost effectiveness. Naveed Sherwani, CEO of his application-specific FPGA design firm, RapidSilicon, says that with a number of design centers opening in countries such as India, Malaysia and China, a lot of the mundane (junior-level) work is done. You said you are outsourcing to these countries. “Most (but not all) high-level architectural work is done in the United States, and subsequent work on architecture, physical design, and verification is done in these design centers,” he said. .
But Sherwani predicts that a major disruption is on the horizon that could reshape the global working environment in chip design. In his experimentation and development of his AI-based tool in his RapidSilicon for FPGA designers known as RapidGPT, the senior engineer’s output improved by about 5x (and often more).
Experimentation was mainly performed on the front end: writing the RTL (Register Transfer Level) for various tasks, documentation, bug detection, testbench development, and intelligent execution of the tool based on various choices and options. rice field. This tool helps designers optimize their solutions, increase productivity and reduce time to market. According to him, these kinds of changes could be directly eliminating a lot of outsourced work, and perhaps even entire design centers.
Workforce transformation is imminent
This change will bring about a significant reorganization of the workforce in the Indian semiconductor industry. According to the report, 38% of employees are currently working in electronic design automation (EDA). This is due to the abundance of skilled engineering talent in the country and the cost-effectiveness of running a design center here, making India an attractive location for this segment. .
Not surprisingly, the adoption of AI will further reduce operating costs for chip companies. What’s more important to note is that the bar to surpassing what the machine is already capable of increases with each new and powerful model. As Sherwani says, in the short term, companies with senior employees will automatically have an advantage. Because AI, like a manager, needs someone to steer them to perform specific tasks.
In the long run, however, juniors can upskill faster to stay ahead of technological innovations. According to Sriharsha Pudi, a senior engineer in charge of chip design at Marvell Technologies, companies that rely on outsourcing can only be sustained by investing in the overall development of their workforce. By encouraging first-principles thinking when tackling complex design challenges, the employee will increase his domain-specific knowledge of the ASIC he is working on and, in the long run, better understand the chip’s complex microarchitecture. can understand.
In a previous conversation with Jim Keller, CEO of AI computing company Tenstorrent, I mentioned that they are already using AI for tasks such as test generation, and are experimenting in other areas. He acknowledged that it would bring about a massive change in jobs, but also said it was too early to say how many people were unemployed.
“It will destroy jobs and create jobs pretty quickly. People always think that the next tech revolution will destroy jobs. We’ve never built technology so smart, we’ve built technology that’s efficient, effective, fast, with more capacity, smarter, more accurate, but this time judgment We have the technology with the technology,” he said.
Driving India-led chip design
On the positive side, the Indian government is actively working to develop the semiconductor ecosystem in the country. C-DAC Bangalore’s recently launched ChipIN center specializes in digital, analog, RF and mixed signal design.
The center will foster an innovation-driven ecosystem for India’s entrepreneurial spirit and start-ups, facilitating the creation of unique IP cores, chips and systems in areas such as 5G/IoT, AI/ML, automotive and mobility It is intended to The ultimate goal is to establish India as a major contributor to the global semiconductor industry.
Perhaps this will help India become less dependent on the West, develop its own ecosystem that nurtures talent, and move from a labor-centric economy to an innovation-driven nation.
