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Intel Developing New Chip Designs in India 306

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-thats-good-for-them-then-isn't-it dept.
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 More

Intel Developing New Chip Designs in India

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  • Work Visa (Score:4, Funny)

    by zenithcoolest ( 981748 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @09:57AM (#16392213)
    Guess they dont have to worry about work visa issues in US :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by arivanov ( 12034 )
      No, they have to worry about people faking expenses and simulating work that has not been done instead. At least this [theregister.co.uk] was the result of the previous Indian design effort. If it was not for unauthorised Israeli skunkworks that became the Core series Intel would have been in really deep shit now. I guess that they have not learned their lesson yet.
      • Way to go Mate!! Hear hear for the misinformation.

        In India, a few categories of business expense reimbursements (called "fringe benefits" under the India Tax law) paid by employer to employee are tax exempt. These include things like business related travel expenses, costs associated with having a telephone at home, conveyance, and over-the-counter medicine, house rent etc. Each category has an amount limit, but more importantly, they employee is supposed to submit receipts of these expenses to the employer

  • Processors (Score:5, Funny)

    by kevin_conaway ( 585204 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @10:00AM (#16392271) Homepage
    So can we look forward to the new Intel Ganges, Hoogly and Yamuna processors?

    • 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!

  • Project Code Name (Score:5, Funny)

    by Billosaur ( 927319 ) * <<wgrother> <at> <optonline.net>> on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @10:01AM (#16392279) Journal

    Vindaloo

  • Is it really for cost savings? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @10:02AM (#16392301)
    This seems unfortunate to me. Other than people from India, the world's top minds simply don't want to live in India. This means that the chips will be designed almost exclusively by people from India. There is no lack of intellect in India. However, a monocultural design team was fine back in the days of the 8086 when a small team or even an individual could design a microprocessor, but nowadays you need extremely large groups of people working in concert. When all of these people have the same background, you stifle innovation. Why Intel is willing to limit innovation by essentially ignoring Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia is hard to speculate, unless they really and truly believe this is a cost saving measure. It seems odd, though, to attempt to save money in R&D rather than in production and support. It seems an R&D laboratory in Switzerland, for example, would make more sense if they are hoping to attract top talent.

    • Re:Is it really for cost savings? (Score:5, Insightful)

      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?

  • I bet the Blue Guys are happy about this... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Veetox ( 931340 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @10:04AM (#16392331)
    I wonder how much of this projected inovation is the result of a renewed effort, spurred by AMD's earlier challenges. I really hope that AMD keeps competing at the same level, otherwise, we'll see prices go right back up again, and definitely more of Intel's cheesy marketing.

  • The TFA is more accurate (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gopal.V ( 532678 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @10:08AM (#16392397) Homepage Journal

    TFA clearly says

    "is working on new chipsets for the small form-factor notebook ...Validation work on server processors 5300 and 7100"

    As much as I'd love India to lose the cheap indian labour [dotgnu.info] tag and actually find its place in the R&D world - this could be summed up as premature ejaculation. Validation work (aka quality assurance) is not really what I'd consider worthy of mention, but chipsets are indeed a step forward - if indeed they are being designed here, not merely run through QA.

    People here are comparitively cheap, but that does not automatically mean that "You get what you pay for", unless you do shop around for a bargain.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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

    • Re:The TFA is more accurate (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MarkKnopfler ( 472229 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @11:59AM (#16394175)
      I would like to point out that your ideas about validation are pretty wrong. Hardware verification is not quality assurance. It is a complete and difficult part of hardware development apart from the fact that it also is a rather difficult subject in engineering. Think of traversing all simple paths in of a really really huge graph and making sure all paths work perfectly. That is just a trivial description of the problem. It also requires a deep understanding of the functionality that the RTL is out to deliver. This is not testing/validation as is thought of by us in the software world.

         

  • fer'ners (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @10:12AM (#16392469)
    Weren't the latest round of Intel chips (Conroe, Woodcrest, Merom) developed by Intel's Israel development center? So why is it news that they're having their Indian branch work on some newer things? I thought that was the entire point of creating development centers in various places around the globe...

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by oliverthered ( 187439 )
      If that's true then I'm only going to buy AMD.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by aadvancedGIR ( 959466 )
      Strange, it looks like these are the places that would most likely face the risk of regional nuclear war within 20 years. Maybe Intel plan is to save on retirement packages.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 )
        Maybe they're just trying to ensure they'll have lots of melted sand to work with in the future... : p

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrDitto ( 962751 )
      Yes, Core Duo is done in Israel. However its still based on the P6 design (Pentium III, Pentium-M, etc). Of course they did improve the design.
      • The Pentium M is also designed in Israel. It is based on the P6 core, but has a number of significant improvements (much better branch prediction, for example).
    • Companies with their head screwed on use multiple countries for 24/7 development and/or support. US works on code, goes home, code handed over to Phillipines, they work on it, hand it on to Eastern Europe, they do their bit then it goes back to the US.
  • It would be great if the new cheap were designed with operating systems and end users in mind.
    There is a number of things that would be much better if the CPU supported some special instruction. Every OS class student has been tought this.
    Unluckily, most of the new features will certainly be focused on DRM and other copyright enforcement technology!

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by misleb ( 129952 )
      It would be great if the new cheap were designed with operating systems and end users in mind.
      There is a number of things that would be much better if the CPU supported some special instruction. Every OS class student has been tought this.


      Such as? Users get the virtualization instruction and SSE3. Do you have more special instructions in mind?

      -matthew

    • There is a number of things that would be much better if the CPU supported some special instruction. Every OS class student has been tought this.

      I was taught that special instructions were a waste of time as 95% percent of the chips time was spent on the simplist operations such as load/store, logic and simple arithmetic. Hence the RISC chipset.

      Perhaps the situation has changed now that compilers are a little more sophisticated. I say a little. SIMD is nice for intensive applications like encoders and numbe

  • 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? Probab

  • That Intel (Score:3, Funny)

    by creepynut ( 933825 ) <teddy(slashdot)&teddybrown,ca> on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @10:25AM (#16392657) Homepage
    Intel Corporation, the $39-billion largest chip maker in the world
    OOooh, THAT Intel. Good think you specified!
  • ...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 "Fr

    • Re:This is only going to continue... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by El Torico ( 732160 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @11:29AM (#16393671)
      Wow, you really do want to go to GITMO, don't you? Proposing that "the People" reassume control of the US is a very risky position to take. Right now, most of "the People" are doing well enough to not think there is a problem.

      Actually, I agree with you. What you propose (Fair Trade vs. Free Trade) is what the European Union has done. There are very specific criteria for membership; items such as worker and environmental protections are included. Here's the wikipedia entry on the criteria - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_criteria [wikipedia.org].

      Unfortunately, the US has embraced the "Race to the Bottom" approach and we now can see the results. Globalization is a mixed blessing; on the one hand it does raise GDP for participating nations, but on the other hand, it can have serious repercussions. Of course, I'm expecting to be flamed and modded down now for attempting to be truly "fair and balanced".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khallow ( 566160 )

      OTOH, "fair" trade isn't necessarily a good idea for the people it supposedly helps. Part of the reason the developing world gets so many jobs is because the labor there is cheap. They don't have the infrastructure, they aren't particularly close to the big developed world markets, and their legal systems can be quite messed up. So they often don't have much to attract a business. IMHO, they often get work only because they can work in sweat shops and be exploited as cheap labor. Fair trade is a great deal

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cnelzie ( 451984 )
        Who's fault is that?

        The problem is that in the developing world there is a massive rift between those that have and those that don't have.

        This has created a system, wherein the Haves easily and consistantly take advantage of and hold down the aspirations of the Have Not. By forcing the Haves into providing more equity to the Have Nots, two things will happen. One, working conditions and compensation will increase for the works. Two, more equitable trade agreements will be for

  • A problem that won't be fixed overnight... (Score:5, Insightful)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by c6gunner ( 950153 )
      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.
    • 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.

      Hang on there! Sure, this is why Indian labor is competitive with US labor-- but you make it sound like the US is just a bunch of lazy fatcats. I'm not an economist, but US productivity has been on the rise for a long ti

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cyber-vandal ( 148830 )
      Explain to me why not wanting to work most of your waking hours makes you lazy?

    • Re:A problem that won't be fixed overnight... (Score:4, Insightful)

      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.

  • And when they outsource _management_ to India... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...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,
  • India designing hardware does not bother me. The lack of quality drivers is what I'm worried about.
  • That's it. I'm against outsourcing. I don't like India. I believe what goes around comes around. As far as Intel goes:
    I'll never buy another Intel Processor again! I encourage all of you to do the same.
    • after all, they oursource too [indiadaily.com]. What are you going to buy, Cyrix? *snicker*.

  • Sign of weakness? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wytcld ( 179112 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @11:31AM (#16393709) Homepage
    Anything involving chip design depends heavily not just on your patent portfolio, but on accumulating a set of minds with deep experience. Yes, you need to keep bringing in fresh genius; but you also need to retain the old, both for its continued insights and to help cultivate the new talent. So if Intel is really shipping out any of its major chip design work (as compared to testing, where the more different angles you test from the better - and which may really be all that's involved here), that's a sign that it currently values its accumulated "live capital" - its stock of engineering geniuses - low enough that it figures it might as well start over again with virgin staff elsewhere.

    Now, there can be reasons for that. The American car makers are crashing because they should have fired their engineering staffs a couple of decades ago and simply started over. But has Intel really reached a similar point?
    • Intel's problems are not and have never been in the implementation of processor architecture. Their problems have always been their grandiose instruction set and architectural fantasies, and the degree to which they've let their plans be guided by currently-popular acadedmic theories.

      80286 segmentation was at least partly informed by the design of PL/1 and Pascal.

      iApx432 was the super-CISC designed to deal with object-orientation at the hardware level.

      i860 needed advanced compiler technology that was still

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      The auto industry's problem is slow recognition of schanges in trends, trying to yuse marketing to stop upcoming trends once they do recognized it, and poor entrenched managment philosophy.

  • Is it just unrealistic to believe that the work could be performed in the United States? Or is it a moot point anyway because (as humourously pointed out in another thread) the people working on it in that case would be Indians with work visas?
  • What exactly does the submitter mean by "the $39-billion largest chip maker"? Intel's market cap [yahoo.com] is $120B.
  • Wasn't it not that long ago that Intel was ending their Indian development efforts due to poor progress and employee fraud? Now they're back again?
  • I'm not sure whether I think of this as good or bad, but corporations are spreading ALL of their pieces around the world. They don't want to be dependent on any country in particular. (It's hard to blame them for THAT attitude!) This will, inevitably, mean that their costs and benefits are also distributed. One of the benefits is jobs.

    This is a clear argument that corporations should not be given legal advantages in excess of the net benefits they provide, but that was reasonably clear already. (I coun

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