'The entire base of software expertise is available to build hardware'

What

is the reason behind Xilinx’s increased interest in India?

A. There is not much hardware design happening in India. This is set to

change now that the entire base of software expertise is available to build

hardware. All the things that had limited India’s hardware development have

gone. The chip resides on the engineer’s desk. They write software on it. They

have functional hardware because the chip is programmable. The chip can be

sitting anywhere in the world. It can be monitored and upgraded through the

remote hardware development capability. This is expected to generate new markets

for products such as remotely upgradable communications satellites or consumer

electronic products connected to the Internet.

What are your product categories and what are the specific market you are

looking at?

A. It consists of one, very high capacity devices called the Virtex family,

with very advanced functionalities. The second is the low cost family, called

Spartan, which are now getting designed in the digital consumer marketplace.

Most of the digital consumer products we sell are to PDA, cellphone

manufacturers. With Spartan FPGAs, XC9500 and CoolRunner CPLDs, Xilinx will

continue to aggressively reduce the cost of its chips to gain broader access to

high-volume markets, replacing custom gate arrays and other ASIC solutions.

These are used very heavily to provide interfaces between the different

applications–all on one device. These are designed heavily in SE Asia, with

markets around the world.

What is your estimation of the Indian market for the products that will

use your chips?

A. The total PLD market in India is about $6 million. We have about thirty

five percent market share. Altera and Quick Logic are other important players

here.

Who are your distributors in India?

A. Insight, a division of Memec Asia Pacific, is the sole distributor for

Xilinx products in India.

Sudesh Prasad