With a multi-fold growth in terms of headcount as well as capabilities in semiconductor technologies, Samsung Semiconductor India Research (SSIR) has proven to be a vital innovation hub and a key driver in the company’s growth. In an interview with Sudhir Chowdhary, Balajee Sowrirajan, corporate vice-president & managing director, SSIR, enumerates the innovations from the India centre. Excerpts:
What are the key factors that have contributed to SSIR’s growth in India?
India is a destination for building R&D centres owing to the technology, talent, success stories around innovation generating from these centres. Our India R&D centre is proving to be a strong innovation hub for our global arm, driving innovation across memory and logic chip technology . The key strength of our centre in India is execution excellence. Samsung Semiconductor India Research (SSIR) has proven to be a vital innovation hub and a key driver in the company’s growth — with a breadth of expertise available; circuit design, IP design, SoC design, embedded and communication software encompassing the complete software stack.
Today, SSIR handles end-to-end product development for many business-critical products. This range of skills and proficiency has helped transform the India centre into a major innovation hub for Samsung.
With a team of 40 software engineers, SSIR has emerged as one of the largest global R&D centres for Samsung Semiconductors. Its talent pool (3000+ employees) consists of experts from the semiconductor industry and fresh talent from leading campuses like IITs, BITs and IISc. However, the long-term perspective of product development should be appreciated and India’s expenditure on R&D has to be more. With more government incentives and active participation from Indian corporates, India is all set to become a global innovation hub in the future.
Tell us about some of the innovations that have been developed at SSIR.
SSIR has contributed to multiple innovations along with its global counterparts, especially in Korea. India is a vital innovation hub and the R&D centre here is a key driver contributing to the company’s growth. The technological prowess spans from end-end product planning architecture to product qualification. A lot of work happens here in the sensor space and there are multiple world’s firsts that SSIR has contributed to from India. The state-of- the-art labs located in the Bengaluru office are used for image sensors and memory products. There is also a team that works on power management for effective power and battery management. In a nutshell, from chips that are there on a phone to automotive storage solutions, or critical foundation IPs, SSIR team works on cutting-edge semiconductor technologies and on various embedded solutions.
What do you think has been the impact of 5G on the semiconductor ecosystem?
Most of the devices like smartphones, wearables today are powered by 5G modem chips. With 5G, a greater number of devices can be connected to the network, with extreme reliability and virtual absence of latency. In the future, 5G technologies will penetrate automotive space, IoT space, logistics, smart factories, homes, etc. 5G will also impact connected homes, connected equipment and connected cars.
What are some of the next big trends in the chip industry?
The semiconductor industry is ever changing with the evolution of intelligence of machines and things. Interestingly, the increasing mobile usage in the country, coupled with the need for high computational power, increased storage requirements due to evolved multimedia applications and high-end sensors for image processing, is accelerating India as a hotspot for chip-level innovation. Today, even an entry-level smartphone needs AI to stand out in the market. Many industrial applications in India also require high computational power and edge computing. The country is also a potential market for autonomous vehicles which requires high-performance localised computing power while the automotive industry stresses on high-end infotainment systems.
With the emergence of smart cities, smart homes and smart factories, there is huge opportunity for semiconductor companies to create breakthrough IoT innovations.
