CMC to set up centre for Xilinx

Tata group enterprise CMC Limited has entered into an agreement with the Washington-based $1.3 billion Xilinx Inc to set up a technology development centre at CMC's campus in Hyderabad.

The Xilinx-CMC India Development Centre in Hyderabad is being established to develop field programmable gate array (FPGA) solutions targeted at high growth markets like digital consumer electronics, automotive and communications.

Addressing a press conference, Xilinx chairman and CEO Wim Roelandts said, "Asia is fast becoming our biggest market for digital consumer electronics and we needed to establish a technology development centre." The technology development centre in Hyderabad is the first facility that the US-based company has set up in the Asia Pacific region.

Xilinx is the world's leading supplier of programmable logic solutions, one of the fastest growing segments of the semi-conductor industry.

While no financial details of the deal were announced citing CMC's ongoing public offer, it is understood that CMC would provide manpower for this highly specialised operation. "Initially, we will have about 40 employees engaged in FPGA work and later on the numbers could be ramped up to around 300 employees in the next two years," R Ramanan, the managing director and CEO, CMC Limited, said.

The tie-up with CMC, Roelandts said, was not exclusive and Xilinx would continue to actively seek partners in India to outsource work. The tie-up with CMC will see Xilinx offer management support and guide work at the development centre while CMC would run the centre with fully dedicated technology development and managerial staff.

The agreement between the two companies also provides for a BOT (build-operate-transfer) model and Roelandts said that in the long term Xilinx may look at recruiting directly for its development centre.

"At present, we are not looking at the BOT model, though the agreement provides for this. After two years, we may look at recruiting directly from the market and we may absorb employees from CMC onto our rolls in the future," Roelandts said.