STMicroelectronics: Making the right kind of designs

Chip manufacturing is an essential but extremely competitive industry, and yet ST Microelectronics has risen from the ranks to emerge as the number three manufacturer worldwide, after industry stalwarts like IBM and Intel. STM has been designing integrated circuits (IC) chips in India since 1992 at its Noida facility, the company’s largest design centre outside Europe. Today, this centre has emerged as a major hub for providing and supporting worldwide IT applications and chip designs. Punita Jasrotia reports

According to Pradeep Kumar, STM Noida combines the discipline of a global service-oriented corporate culture with the skills of the Indian scientific and engineering community

A firm believer in the saying ‘actions speak louder than words,’ STMicroelectronics (STM), a global player in developing and delivering semiconductor solutions across the spectrum of microelectronics applications, is the third largest semiconductor producer in the world. What is commendable is that despite the currently prevailing economic downturn, STM has been successfully growing and transforming itself. A Franco-Italian venture, the STM group came into existence in 1987, as a result of the merger between SGS Microelettronica of Italy and Thomson Semiconducteurs of France. The company has operations in five locations across the world but it’s the Indian operations that have played a key role in the success of STM.

STM officials say that the company was bullish about India since the beginning, a statement strengthened by the fact that STM opened its liaison office in Delhi back in 1988, just a year after the formation of the company. Back then, it was one of the few international microelectronics companies to recognise India’s intellectual and market potential and open an office. STM has been designing integrated circuits (IC) chips in India since 1992, with the Noida facility being the company’s largest design centre outside Europe.

The success story

In the 16 years of its existence, STM has risen from the number 15 position to become the third largest producer of semiconductors in the world. Today, the company designs, develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of semiconductor IC chips and discrete devices used in a wide variety of microelectronic applications, including telecommunications systems, computer systems, consumer products, automotive products and industrial automation and control systems.

Geographically, the company has divided its operations into five main areas—North America, Europe, Japan, APAC and emerging markets (constituting India, Eastern Europe, South America and Middle East). With a total of 43,000 employees (1,000 in India), STM has 39 design centres worldwide and 16 advanced R&D centres (developing embedded and chip designing software). STM’s success can be credited to a unique combination of silicon and system expertise, manufacturing strength, robust Intellectual Property (IP) portfolio and strategic partners, which have helped it reach the forefront of system-on-chip (SoC) technology.

Pradeep Kumar, country director-India and vice president of Emerging Markets, STM Microelectronics says, "Last year the company’s R&D budget was around Rs 103 crore." Under the company’s emerging market plans, STM Noida’s design activities began in 1993, and the success of the initial venture led to the establishment of a major design centre in 1995. According to Kumar, as part of the Region 5 (emerging markets) strategy, the Indian site first had to ‘grow with the market’ and then develop into a major player. This led to the formation of a dedicated team at Noida for product management, services and marketing, which over the years has cultivated a close working partnerships with Indian customers and distributors.

The third focus of the strategy was to play a key role in STM’s time-to-market drive. This is achieved through multifunctional IP design and reuse activities carried out, covering the complete spectrum of IC design, (from foundation IPs to core IPs), full products and system development for STM’s global market. "STM Noida combines the discipline of a global service-oriented corporate culture with the skills and enthusiasm of the Indian scientific and engineering community, fully supported by the power of an advanced worldwide communications network," says Kumar.

STM Noida provides a wide spectrum of IP products for SoC designs to STM’s global market and is also deeply involved in the crucial area of super-integration, wherein it embeds complex functions in ultra-high density logic with a focus on robustness of IPs.

In terms of design, the Noida facility takes care of system application design, IP/IC design and management of information system design, with a focus on five main segments—computer peripherals, digital consumer, automotive, communications and smart cards.

In the computer peripherals segment, the company focuses on areas like data storage, printers and imaging, monitors and display screens, webcams and optical mouse. For digital consumers the focus is on set-top boxes, DVDs, digital TVs, digital cameras and MP3 players. For the automotive industry, the application focus is more on engine/body/safety, car radio, car multimedia, telematics, while for communications it is on wireless, networking and wireless infrastructure. The company has also consolidated its position in smart cards with applications ranging in telephone, banking, user ID and the security areas.

STM Noida: Achievements galore

According to Kumar, the design activities conducted at STM Noida emphatically demonstrate the facility’s commitment to being a "multifunctional design and development centre," seamlessly integrated with the company’s worldwide operations. The major successes achieved during 2002 include: significant contributions to STM’s Central Research and Development (CRD) organisation, formation of two of the company’s major product divisions—the Consumer and Microcontroller group (CMG) and the Telecom, Peripherals and Automotive Groups (TPA).

The CRD team in Noida has been a major contributor in the development of the new 90 nanometres CMOS (0.09 micron) design platform. This initiative is part of an alliance announced earlier this year between Motorola, Philips and STM to jointly develop breakthrough semiconductor technology at their new R&D centre in Crollesm, France. STM Noida has played a key role in the development of the full platform library (creating a library of best practices) that includes two standard cell libraries and extremely dense embedded memories. (Worldwide, the company has 100 libraries spread across its facilities on a shareable basis). The CMG R&D team in Noida is a ‘Centre of Excellence’ in areas that require specific expertise, such as I/O interfaces, among regulators, oscillators, PLLs and ADCs.

The Systems Laboratory (CMG-SL) has emerged as a global support centre for DVD solutions that draw on STM’s full DVD product portfolio. Video and audio Competence centres work on many advanced projects such as audio algorithms that will be implemented (within this month) in new DVD products using the new STM 220 VLIW processor. Noida’s contribution in the set-top box, imaging and DVD areas ranges from core IP development to SoC verification and back-end. In the field of microcontrollers, the team at Noida takes complete responsibility for the design, from initial specification to silicon industrialisation of SoC devices such as mouse or USB controllers containing embedded 8-bit MCUs. The audio and automotive team in Noida was established with a mission to design SoC products for vehicles in the audio and communication arenas, in keeping with the goal to drive the digital core architectural evolution through the SoC integration of Micro and DSP cores, embedded memories and ASIC technologies.

Successful projects in 2002 included an in-car remote amplifier DSP and a multi-standard automatic toll application. Apart from its significant contribution to STM’s business, STM India is a major hub for providing and supporting the parent company’s worldwide IT applications and related activities. It helps in deploying and supporting internal HR systems, time attendance systems, travel and expense systems through STM worldwide.

At present, the Indian operations has close to 1,000 employees, with over 850 being designers. "All this only reflects the multifunctional nature of the site and our ability to create a leading-edge technology," says Kumar. STM Noida has started the Total Quality and Environment Management (TQEM) approach, which helps it improve every process and every product at each step. Besides, it has also filed for more than 60 patents, of which 34 were filed in 2002 itself.

Future focus

STM Noida envisions itself as a soft manufacturer of a large number of reusable IP’s, contributing to an ever-decreasing time-to-market drive of STM products. "Considering that we already have Corporate Software Fab (software development centre) taking care of our process and in-house software needs, the purpose is to leverage this IPs for future organisational developments," explains Kumar.

According to him, STM’s quest of being a leading semiconductor supplier has resulted in the company having a stronger focus on system solution and emerging markets, and leveraging on its product strength and R&D capabilities. Furthermore, STM India is also embarking upon complex SoC’s for DVDs, navigation systems, imaging devices and set-top boxes.

In case of embedded software and systems, the Indian operations is ramping up its contribution in applications related to telecom, TV, digital signal processor and multimedia. With a further penetration of the digital gadget market, convergence is one area which the company is eyeing as a potential revenue driver in the next couple of years.

According to Kumar, this enthusiasm is the result of the recent initiatives by the Central government and court directives, which will result in an increased usage of set-top-boxes. Besides, it also plans to address the Digital Divide through its innovations in technology. For this, the company had, last year, launched a thin client-server based solution. This box was launched in association with Electronics Research and Development Centre (ER&DC). With two pilots (in two schools at Kanpur and Delhi) running successfully, the company plans to increase its applications in the coming months. Currently, it is in talks with the Ministry of Information Technology for introducing the solution in other schools across the country. This is also expected to help the company increase its penetration in the Indian market and make a foray in the low-cost technology arena.

On the investment front, the company has already invested approximately Rs 200 crore till date in India and is planning to get more funding for their next designing facility, which is expected to be ready by the year-end. In addition to this, company also plans to recruit 500 more professionals during this year. With the best of the talents recruited from the leading universities, state-of-the-art technology in infrastructure and SEI-CMM level 5 for its IT applications, STM India seems geared to become an even stronger contributor to STM’s worldwide initiatives.