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Intel Developing New Chip Designs in India

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."

38 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. Work Visa by zenithcoolest · · Score: 4, Funny

    Guess they dont have to worry about work visa issues in US :)

    1. Re:Work Visa by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Work Visa by Z34107 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      lets thank all our elected republicans for helping out the middle class families out there /end sarcasm. .|..

      Traditionally, Republicans have been protectionist. Free-trade Republicans are a new breed. There are also free-trade Democrats.

      a great example of how capitalistic free open market with lots of competition can bite us in the ass. sure its great to have competition, unfortunately one way to be competitive is to reduce your expenses(costs). overseas is cheaper then the u.s., so everything is moved overseas to help reduce costs, increase profits, and potentially be more competitive since you will have more flexibility in your prices.

      This is a good thing.

      goodbye american jobs

      Not true. Granted, if an Indian engineer can design a circuit for $15 an hour and an American won't work for less than $50, the American is going to lose his job to the Indian.

      However, free trade also creates jobs, especially in my home state of Wisconsin. With tariffs and other protections removed that make offsourcing and exporting possible, our dairy industry now sells a great deal overseas. This is especially true for the smaller farmers - they didn't have the infrastructure the corporate farms did to effectively deal with trade barriers; now, they have a market to sell to that they didn't before.

      Trade works both ways. American engineers may lose jobs in the short run, but everyone who uses a computer will benefit from cheaper microprocessor prices. European farmers may lose jobs, but the EU gets cheaper milk. Although it sure sucks to be the Engineer, the offshoring, in effect, made the rest of the world richer - if everything costs less, you can buy more than you could before, even though you don't make any more money.

      Free trade isn't as simple as "goodbye American jobs" - it's a choice between protecting a few industries or seeing a widespread reduction in the price of, well, everything.

      --
      DATABASE WOW WOW
    3. Re:Work Visa by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      However, free trade also creates jobs, especially in my home state of Wisconsin. With tariffs and other protections removed that make offsourcing and exporting possible, our dairy industry now sells a great deal overseas. This is especially true for the smaller farmers - they didn't have the infrastructure the corporate farms did to effectively deal with trade barriers; now, they have a market to sell to that they didn't before.

      This seems to me to be a huge negative from a few different angles.
      1. Energy usage- is it really a good thing to be selling parishable dairy products a half a world away at all, essentially creating huge multinational corporations, where millions of local dairies served before and created a fresher product for the mere reason that it didn't have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get to you?
      2. If we're selling dairy overseas, what is happening to local dairies overseas? Are they losing their market to US Government subsidised dairy products?
      3. And what happens to those overseas dairy farmers? Do they end up coming here to compete with us for land and resources (by coming here illegally, as the Oxacan Chicano Indians did when the same thing happened in Mexico) or by committing suicide (as farmers in India are doing)?

      None of this seems very positive to me.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    4. Re:Work Visa by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Processors by kevin_conaway · · Score: 4, Funny

    So can we look forward to the new Intel Ganges, Hoogly and Yamuna processors?

    1. Re:Processors by blueZhift · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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!

  3. Project Code Name by Billosaur · · Score: 4, Funny

    Vindaloo

    --
    GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
  4. Is it really for cost savings? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Is it really for cost savings? by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 4, Informative

      Those came from the Israel development center, not India.

      --
      This guy's the limit!
    2. Re:Is it really for cost savings? by speculatrix · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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?

    3. Re:Is it really for cost savings? by imagin8r · · Score: 2, Interesting

      BTW, India is hardly "monocultural" -- the country has 23 official languages, and numerous "unofficial" ones, each spoken by more people than live in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Slovenia and other such "different" cultures. The Indian subcontinent (including Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldives) has more than three times as many people who live in Europe, and if you exclude Russia, the subcontinent is larger than all of Europe. BTW, there is no reason for Europe to be called a "continent" -- it is not an independent land mass at all. There are more cultures to be found in the Indian "continent" than in all of Europe.

    4. Re:Is it really for cost savings? by joe_bruin · · Score: 2, Informative

      There's a simple answer, and it's not about white and brown.

      Israel has a high standard of living in the ballpark of European and North American nations. Opening up a development plant in Israel, or Germany, or Ireland is not thought of as "outsourcing" because there is not a (significant) cost savings versus American employees, it's simply a matter of going to where the talent is. Outsourcing to India or China, on the other hand, is seen as a pure cost move because of those nations' considerable cost difference. While there may be many qualified Indians, the perception is always that America jobs were transitioned to India because of cost. People don't have that impression from jobs in Israel, because the view is that the jobs there are being done there because of short supply of talent in the US.

  5. I bet the Blue Guys are happy about this... by Veetox · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  6. The TFA is more accurate by Gopal.V · · Score: 4, Informative

    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 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.

    1. Re:The TFA is more accurate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:The TFA is more accurate by MarkKnopfler · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  7. fer'ners by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...

    --
    This guy's the limit!
    1. Re:fer'ners by oliverthered · · Score: 2, Funny

      If that's true then I'm only going to buy AMD.

      --
      thank God the internet isn't a human right.
    2. Re:fer'ners by aadvancedGIR · · Score: 2, Funny

      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.

    3. Re:fer'ners by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 2, Funny

      Maybe they're just trying to ensure they'll have lots of melted sand to work with in the future... : p

      --
      This guy's the limit!
  8. No sure why this is news... by jense · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Touting MyEclipse AJAX Tools
  9. That Intel by creepynut · · Score: 2, Funny
    Intel Corporation, the $39-billion largest chip maker in the world
    OOooh, THAT Intel. Good think you specified!
  10. This is only going to continue... by cnelzie · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...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.

    --
    If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
    1. Re:This is only going to continue... by El+Torico · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      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".

      --
      In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
  11. A problem that won't be fixed overnight... by ErichTheRed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:A problem that won't be fixed overnight... by c6gunner · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:A problem that won't be fixed overnight... by cyber-vandal · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Explain to me why not wanting to work most of your waking hours makes you lazy?

    3. Re:A problem that won't be fixed overnight... by blahplusplus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "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.

  12. And when they outsource _management_ to India... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...maybe people will start to take notice.

    India has dozens of http://www.indianmba.com/Top_B-Schools/top_b-schoo ls.html 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?

  13. Re:Quality? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  14. Re:CPU design goals by misleb · · Score: 2, Informative
    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 NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
  15. Priorities by ZombieSquirrel · · Score: 2, Funny

    India designing hardware does not bother me. The lack of quality drivers is what I'm worried about.

  16. Sign of weakness? by wytcld · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

    --
    "with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
  17. Re:A question many Intel USA Engs will soon be ask by jejones · · Score: 4, Informative

    Consider this: If you lose 7.5% of these jobs a year in ten years, 75% of them are gone.

    Ummm...actually, you lose (1 - .925**n) * 100 percent after n years, so with n = 10, that's a hair over 54 percent.

  18. But the ones who understand math will be OK. by argent · · Score: 2, Funny

    If you lose 7.5% of these jobs a year in ten years, 75% of them are gone.

    I assume that the 55% of the jobs that are lost over that ten year period are the ones held by the engineers who don't understand basic math.

  19. Re:Hi, my name is Lizzy Faire! by dpilot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The unspoken side is that the MOST overpaid jobs are not the R&D, but the executives.

    Obviously as you offshore the workers, you end up offshoring the first-line managers next. At some point, it becomes sensible to offshore some second-line managers, and so on. This continues up the chain, until those left see the logical conclusion, circle the wagons, and say, "It doesn't make financial sense to offshore any higher-level jobs." Or course they mean, "financial sense for me" to offshore higher-level jobs.

    But by this time, there will be a lot of experience - some of it quite high-level, walking around the streets of India, which another post has suggested has more of a revolving door than Silicon Valley in its heyday. So how long before fully Indian semiconductor companies emerge? They won't have the Intel name, but that isn't as important outside the US and Europe, especially at a much lower price.

    Once we've offshored every aspect of technical operation, what's left? Is the corner office really that valuable, especially outside the US?

    --
    The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
  20. Re:Quality? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    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.

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