FABLESS semiconductor solutions provider Xilinx Inc plans to expand its India operations based out of Hydrabad following its roll-out of 12 IP cores from India in the last 12 months for global requirements.

The President and Chief Executive Officer of Xilinx, Mr Williem Roelandts, said, "We placed a bet on India being an integral part of our global R&D ecosystem and we won, thanks to the high-end development team and collaboration with CMC Ltd. Encouraged by our achievements in the first year at India Development Centre (IDC), we plan to invest in this strategic resource centre of IP cores."

"IP cores are off the shelf, pre-defined hardware design modules that Xilinx customers can use to reduce their design efforts, lower total cost of ownership and experience increase in performance. We have taken to development approach with a difference that is non-traditional and radically distinct from the ASIC (application specific integrated circuits) which is solutions-specific. Though the market today is dominated by ASIC, we expect that programmable chips would become the order of the day," Mr Roelandts, a man with over 40 years of technology expertise, predicts.

Addressing a press conference here along with Xilinx India management team, and the Managing Director of CMC, Mr Ramanathan Ramanan, Mr Roelandts said, "Though we would not like to comment on the investment, we expect to see the team strength to go up to 300. This is big number as they are not mere code writers."

"Xilinx as a corporation spends 17 per cent of all of its revenues for R&D. We believe in being present where the market is growing. The Asia-Pacific market has emerged as one of the fastest growing with 37 per cent after the US, which accounts for about 42 per cent of total business, followed by Europe with 21 per cent. Therefore, the expansion here is strategic for Xilinx," he explained.