1 Introduction
This article tries to throw some light to the board design industry in India. Board design
industry represents a small sector in the semiconductor industry. we see a general structure of the industry, hardware design flow, typical business models, challenges, opportunities etc. This is prepared by referring various research reports and articles on this topic.
2 Industry
Any industry has different players. Electronic design
industry is also not an exception for this fact. According to one Article in
“Electronics For You {EFY}” on its May 2009 issue, India is slowly becoming the
design capital of the world. Design service is a supply side activity. We can
classify the entire semiconductor industry to different heads namely
- Very large scale integration (VLSI) design segment
- Embedded software design segment
- Board/hardware design segment
Hardware board design industry is the smallest contributor
to the semiconductor industry in India. The majority of the board designs are
less than 10 layer boards. There are two categories in this sector. One is
analog design and second one is digital design. India performs very well in the digital design segment but India is not at its best in analog design. Hardware board design can be the development of reference boards
for the ICs or board design as part of new product developments or as a hobby or... India has the ability to design complex multi-layer boards. The growth of this segment is aided by
- Increased outsourcing by service providers.
- Re-engineering opportunities
- Captives partnering third-party service providers and bringing in increased business.
