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Intel Developing New Chip Designs in India 306

An anonymous person noted that "Intel Corporation, the $39-billion largest chip maker in the world, is developing new chip designs and processors at its India development centre to roll out the next generation of notebooks and servers, says a top company official."
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Intel Developing New Chip Designs in India

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  • by jense ( 978975 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @10:17AM (#16392543) Homepage
    Isn't the whole "outsourcing to India" tagline a bit tired? I would expect companies like Intel to put their R&D where it's the cheapest. After all, this can constiute up to 40% of a product's cost (and possibly more with a company like Intel that is so heavily based on new hardware technologies). If India lets them bring it down to 20 or 25%, their investors are the winners and they can continue to be competitive. One more notch in the chain of possible US job losses? Yes. A smart business move? Probably.
  • by cnelzie ( 451984 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @10:33AM (#16392801) Homepage
    ...to happen as long as the Free Trade Agreements remain unfair to the American Citizen while providing gangbuster profits for the American and Foreign owned corporation.

        These Trade Agreements need to be looked at again and readjusted into Fair Trade Agreements. These need to be setup to provide some sort of protections for the foreign workers and demand an equal or better environmental protection system, similar to what the US has.

        Putting both of those as requirements for "Free" Trade will not only return much work to the United States, it will also make the work that will continue to be performed outside of the US safer, cleaner and better for the workers producing those goods.

        What we have now is an unsustainable system that will only result in the future failure of the US economy. Unfortunately, the only way that is going to change is if We, The People are able to replace our money worshipping leaders with a leadership that understands what "For the People, By the People" means.
  • by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @10:45AM (#16393007)
    One thing about the whole Indian outsourcing thing that people don't mention is that companies are increasingly going overseas not for the cheap labor, but for the talent. Remember, wage pressure in India and other outsourcing destinations is increasing, and pretty soon it won't be too much cheaper to do the work overseas.

    The problem we have now is that fewer people are going into technical fields. We're a nation of CEOs, project managers, liaisons, coordinators, and other non-technical people. I've noticed a lot of people in the tech field encouraging their kids not to pursue any sort of science or engineering education. That's not a shocker. First of all, going to law school or getting an MBA guarantees you a lifetime of high income. Scientists/engineers are begging for jobs, and IT types are not finding as many entry-level positions that would get them entry into the field. Second, if you do decide to pursue something technical, the jobs are not guaranteed to be there. Why beat yourself up going for an engineering degree if someone on the other side of the world will work cheaper and do a better job than you could?

    Also, the work ethic and education standard in other countries is much higher. I've worked with Indian outsourcing firms, and they make up for their lack of understanding of the problem with 14 hour work days and no complaints about how low their pay is. Compare that to workers in the US, who waste their whole day grumbling about their pay and are completely lazy.

    Honestly, I don't know how to fix this. If we could somehow ensure that there would still be work available for those of us who like doing technical stuff, that would help.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @10:49AM (#16393065)
    ...maybe people will start to take notice.

    India has dozens of http://www.indianmba.com/Top_B-Schools/top_b-schoo ls.html [indianmba.com] and it seems likely that at least some of them are able to teach students how to pigeonhole things as dogs, stars, problem childs, and cash cows... or whatever it is that MBAs are taught how to do.

    It also seems likely that Indian MBAs on site are at least as capable of managing colleagues as U. S. MBAs a satellite-link away.

    And once management is in India, why shouldn't the CEO be there, too?
  • Re:Quality? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @10:51AM (#16393095)
    So, people are not happy when foreigners get H1 visas and come to work here.

    People are not happy when companies set up shop there so they (damn foreigners) don't have to come here. Obviously, if its not America or American, it has to be inferior. And obviously, why would any talented Indian chose to live and work in India?

    All Indians in India are just F class engineers and the good ones are already here. Mind you, we still hate them, but still, we have the best ones.
  • Re:Processors (Score:4, Insightful)

    by blueZhift ( 652272 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @10:56AM (#16393181) Homepage Journal
    So can we look forward to the new Intel Ganges, Hoogly and Yamuna processors?

    Well actually, I think they are just laying the ground work for future Indian companies that will compete with them in the processor sector. I'm not saying that this is bad, just that Intel, and others, are not going to be able to leverage low wages indefinitely and they may well be opening the vault of their family jewels. Someday in the not too distant future, the PC may have Ganges Inside!
  • by speculatrix ( 678524 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @11:04AM (#16393281)
    the cost of the engineers, designers and testers are largely irrelevant compared to the cost of the actual silicon foundries these days.

    I would thus speculate that Intel are seeking to gain some sort of political foothold in the huge developing market in India and the region.

    haven't Intel also done some deals to set up design centres in China to also gain political leverage and fast-track approvals for their products there?

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @11:10AM (#16393375)
    Why does validation get a bad rap these days? With the growing size and complexity of chips, validation is a much more daunting task than ever. I work in pre-silicon verification at Intel, and in my opinion, the most senior engineers should be the ones doing the verification. Any junior engineer can pretty much take a spec written by an architect and code the RTL. Sure a junior engineer may have to rework some areas once timing analysis comes back, but in general RTL design is not that complicated of a test if the spec is well written and understood. But finding all those bugs before the first tape-out is crucial, and no one but a team of experienced engineers is going to make that happen.

    Having said that, this is not the way Intel does things. Intel puts all its senior engineers on the RTL coding and design. Then all the junior engineers do the testing. Then Intel management wonders why there has to always be multiple steppings of a chip before it's fully functional. I haven't worked in a processor group at Intel, so things might be better on that side of the fence. But this has been my experience in chipset land at Intel for the last 8 years.
  • by c6gunner ( 950153 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @12:06PM (#16394305) Homepage
    I'm sorry, but when I call NetGear tech support, and the guy on the other side can barely speak the language, plus has no idea what a TCP/IP port number is, it doesn't really matter if he works 24 hour days, I'm still gonna be pissed. It also doesn't speak too well for the "talent" in India.

    Also, working 14 hour days doesn't mean they're not lazy. It just means they work 14 hour days. You can pack a lot of goofing-off time into 14 hours.
  • Re:Work Visa (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @12:25PM (#16394583) Homepage Journal
    a great example of how capitalistic free open market with lots of competition can bite us in the ass.

    You have to understand no one has ever seen free trade before. Assuming it ever existed, that must have been a long time ago. Today there are taxes, tariffs, government-granted monopolies, and government regulation, which are all contrary to Free (as in freedom) trade.

    So the problem isn't the free market, it's two things: First, it's not really a free market; and second, the fact that we had even less free trade for a long, long time means that there will be a period of settling out that, yes, will likely be disastrous for the US. Our economy is based on trade not being Free, because it has been that way for generations. The longer a flawed system is perpetuated, the longer it takes to correct the situation.

    Add to the top of this situation the fact that the US has put a lot of effort into keeping other nations down, and you have a serious problem for this country. If those nations had been allowed to grow, they might not be such a threat today; but because people there have nothing, they will work for little more than nothing...

  • by sarhjinian ( 94086 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @12:33PM (#16394701)
    It's because Israelis are "white people" and Indians are "brown people."

    Americans don't like brown people doing work that (white) Americans could do. You'll also see this in the uproar about manufacturing (usually auto) jobs going to Mexico, but hardly a peep about the same jobs going to Canada.
  • Re:Quality? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @12:47PM (#16394939) Journal
    The most recent Intel chips were all designed in Israel. Considering the volatile situation in that part of the world, it makes sense to move some of their assets away from there (one well-places Hezbollah rocket could cost Intel a huge amount).

    This isn't about moving American jobs overseas. The jobs left America ages ago.

  • by cyber-vandal ( 148830 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @01:24PM (#16395615) Homepage
    Explain to me why not wanting to work most of your waking hours makes you lazy?
  • Re:Work Visa (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @02:06PM (#16396463) Homepage Journal
    Good point, first of all. But secondly- if a system has worked for generations, why is it suddenly flawed now? And if it's not really flawed, why "fix" a working system?

    Well, keep in mind that IANAEconomist but it's not that it's suddenly flawed, it's always been flawed. The flaw is that it creates artificial imbalances which cannot be perpetuated indefinitely.

    There are two reasons for this. One is simply that differentials are where the greatest energy exists. You can see this principle of nature at work everywhere you look. Energy has the property that it affects things, which I realize is an understatement but is part of the logical flow of this conversation... But anyway, what I mean by this is that there will constantly be forces working against it, so that it takes a great deal of effort to maintain it. That effort typically takes the form of regulation - but one of the effects of regulation is that it always creates imbalances of its own, which leads to more regulation. It's a self-perpetuating system, which is why trying to change the system from within is typically fruitless. Just in order to enter the system, you become a part of it. The other reason is that if we really did successfully wall ourselves in, then the rest of the world would just find a way to function without us. This is pretty much what's happening now - e.g. China's currency is no longer based on ours.

    So basically, it was a doomed system from the beginning - this doesn't mean it wasn't useful then, it allowed us unparalleled economic growth. But it should have been abandoned when it was no longer useful and started to work against us, and it was not discarded only because certain individuals in power could profit from the status quo.

    The attitude that you can get everything you want without helping others is a ridiculous one. The more you have, and the less others have, the more motivated they are to take away what you have. If you help yourself by helping others, then there is little reason for them to try to deprive you of anything. This has never been proven on a global scale because it has never been tried on a global scale.

  • by blahplusplus ( 757119 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @04:11PM (#16398775)
    "Also, the work ethic and education standard in other countries is much higher. I've worked with Indian outsourcing firms, and they make up for their lack of understanding of the problem with 14 hour work days and no complaints about how low their pay is."

    You must be a manager. Do you honestly want to work 14 hours a day for most of you waking life? I don't. Any sane person who want's some kind of life outside work doesn't either.

    "Compare that to workers in the US, who waste their whole day grumbling about their pay and are completely lazy."

    No, workers in the US just want a higher standard of living where they work to live, not live to work. The crazy ass-tastic practices the desperate people or crazy workaholic cultures around the globe that business people love fail to see the consequences of working too much.

    This pro-workaholic attitude is part and parcel of the reason of why so many peoples lives are go down the shitter in depression, suicide and worse. More homework, more time in school, more time at work, etc, etc.

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