The Karnataka government will set up the country’s first Nanotechnology Center in Bangalore. Announcing this initiative at the three-day Embedded Systems Conference (ESC India), which began here today, M. N. Vidyashankar, IT secretary – Karnataka, said the center, mentored by well known scientist CNR Rao, will be set up with an investment of Rs 500 crore.

Low cost handsets are good for the emerging economies. It not only helps in bridging the digital divide but also helps in economic growth of the country. For ULCH and LCH to succeed one has to look at profitable models for all players-chip manufacturers, handset vendors, and operators. These were some of the deliberations at the Next Generation Low Cost Handsets (LCH) Asia 2007 was held in New Delhi from 4-5 September 2007.

A Validated End-User (VEU) program for India has been announced by the United States Commerce Department. The VEU will facilitate and expand high-technology trade with India even as a secure American export-control system is maintained.

Texas Instruments (TI), the $13.84 billion technology giant, will increasingly focus on the smaller enterprises and start-ups in India, especially for its analog technologies. Gregg Lowe, senior VP, Analog, TI said, “Our widespread sales footprint in the country enables us to reach out to smaller enterprises and technology start-ups.”
TI which was one of the first tech MNC to start its R&D operations in Bangalore in 1985 has
started focusing on the Indian market for its semiconductor technologies.Lowe said this strategy helps TI in the long run as they are able to get into such companies atan early stage and will likely become its loyal customers. “Small customers are less price
sensitive giving us better profit margins,” he remarked.
TI has been taking major strides in increasing the scope and utilization of its analogtechnologies. Though, at one point there was a debate that analog would phase out with theincreasing use of digital. However, Lowe said that as more things becomes digital there has been an increasing demand for analog chips. The global market of analog is estimated to be around $35 billion and is highly fragmented. TI is now expecting a greater demand for analog in India and is picking on sectors like industrial and medical electronics to be early adopters. The total available market for analog in India was $142 million in 2006 and is expected to go upto
$437 million by 2009.

The three-day Embedded Systems Conference, ESC India, concluded in Bangalore, with active participation from the embedded community and keynotes from eminent speakers. Delivering the keynote, luminary of the embedded design world and senior VP at Texas Instruments Greg Lowe said, “The world is watching India become a rich source of innovation and technology. A unique country with world-class design capabilities, it is playing a key role in delivering nextgeneration technologies in the embedded space.”

Wireless chipmaker Broadcom Corp said on Sunday that number-two cell phone maker Samsung Electronics Co Ltd was shipping next-generation handsets that use its chips to cellular operators. The 3G phones, which can surf the Web and download data from the Internet faster than previous generations of phones, are on their way to operators in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and elsewhere, Broadcom said.

The mobile phone or a PDA you are carrying could well be using at least three ARM chips in it. As ARM Holding PLC, the “de facto king” among the mobile chip industry is reaching out to tap on the vast Indian talents, Bangalore unit has emerged as the second largest ARM site after Cambridge. ARM acquired Artisan Components, a development center in Bangalore in 2004 besides setting up its own center in Bangalore a year later.

France's Albert Fert and Germany's Peter Gruenberg won the 2007 Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday for discoveries allowing the miniaturization of hard disks in electronic devices from laptops to iPods.

India's economic growth can reach a sustainable 10 per cent and be spread more evenly across the country if the government pursues ambitious and wide-ranging economic reforms, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has said in a survey.

Expanding its efforts in analog and other areas, Texas Instruments Inc. has acquired Powerprecise Solutions Inc., a fabless supplier of power-management devices. Buying Powerprecise (Herndon, Virg.) allows TI to accelerate the development of battery and power management ICs for consumer, automotive, medical, computing and industrial applications.

Addressing members of the India Semiconductor Association, here, on forthcoming changes in chip design necessary to ride the multimedia wave, Chris Rowen, president and chief executive, Tensilica Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.), said the march of programmability is inexorable, as is the trend to use more processors on a single chip.

On Monday, nineteen leading semiconductor industry companies came together and created a new group called SOI Industry Consortium (SIC). The group's goals are aimed at promoting SOI as a viable material, reaching new markets and reducing costs. The nineteen founding members are a veritable Who's Who list of the semiconductor world.

Amid a sluggish cycle in semiconductors, Japan's IC industry is moving towards a new round of restructuring —if not a shakeout among the weaker players there. And much like their U.S. and European rivals, many Japanese chipmakers are quietly moving towards a fab-lite strategy, as the traditional IDM model remains under pressure. In fact, Japan is once again mulling over plans to form a national foundry company, after a similar effort failed in recent times.

Cadence Design Systems has announced the opening of a third research and development facility in Noida. Mike Fister, president and CEO of Cadence Design Systems will be on hand to unveil the new Rs.46.52 crore ($11.5 million), 93,000 square foot facility as part of the ongoing expansion of Cadence in India. The Noida R&D centre focuses on developing design automation solutions to address the needs of engineers designing at 65 and 45-nm technology process nodes.

Cadence has been named as one of the best employers in Russia. A survey conducted by Hewitt Associates recently examined working conditions, career opportunities and best people practices among a number of firms in Russia. As a result of this survey, Hewitt Associates ranked Cadence® as one of the 10 Best Employers in Russia for the years 2006 and 2007, along with global corporate giants, GlaxoSmithKline, Microsoft and McDonalds.