The Indian arm of American chipmaker Intel is gearing up for a greater share of the company?s R&D work into key areas such as tablets and phones, having increased its headcount by nearly a third over the past year.

The recruitment drive was the biggest since 2003-2004, around the time the India arm began work on its first major chip development programme, said Praveen Vishakantaiah, president Intel India.

?In 2011, we have grown (headcount) about 30%,? Vishakantaiah told FE. ?We are spending a lot of time making sure that we are able to integrate the huge number of people we have brought in.? Intel, whose Bangalore centre is the company?s largest non-manufacturing site outside of the US, currently has over 3000 people, an increase of around 500-600 over its staff count in 2010.

The centre is focussing on the 14 nanometre process technology such as servers or integrated graphics besides the system on a chip platforms for tablets and phones. The 14 nanometre process technology refers to the chip size that would follow the 22 nanometre chips expected next year.

?Clearly, in the system on a chip platforms for tablets and phones there has been significant hiring,? Vishakantaiah said, adding that the company has hired across different R&D segments such as graphics and server development.

Though rivals such as ARM dominate the smartphone market globally, Intel is bullish on the segment with upcoming launches of smartphones and tablets in 2012. ?The push into new market segments such as tablets and handsets creates a need for more and more system-on-a-chip (SOC),? said Sergis Mushell, principal research analyst, CPU and GPU, at Gartner. The SOCs typically do not involve architectural changes.

?When you are creating SOC you would need to change pieces and parts and use different IPs and put them together and make many variations. So the core architecture of the CPU remains the same,? he said. ?In India, you have the skill sets to create those SOC based on different IP blocks.?

?While the cost savings could be significant, the software engineering talent available in India might also be a reason for staffing up. There are many software elements they need to offer for systems and it is India where you have a lot more software engineering people you could leverage to produce these software,? he added.

Since its first major chip development programme Whitefield was abandoned midway in 2005, the Intel India Development Centre has played a key role in designing the company?s first six core Xeon processor and the more the recent Xeon E7 processor family.

?What?s driving the hiring is we have been able to deliver on critical products in the last few years so there?s a lot more confidence in what India can deliver,? said Vishakantaiah.