The electronics industry in India is undergoing a gradual—but inexorable—transition from a software-driven outsourcing model to one increasingly focused on the growth and development of the domestic market. As this shift occurs, the Rs.15,819.94 crore (around $4 billion) embedded computing market is beginning to come into sharp relief.

Over 4 billion embedded systems and devices were shipped worldwide in 2006, according to Venture Development Corp. And it expects that through 2009, the number of embedded devices shipping with a commercial and/or open-source OS to grow at a faster rate than shipments of devices with an in-house/proprietary OS or with no formal OS.

This represents a tremendous growth opportunity for India. The country's total semiconductor market is expected to hit $36.3 billion in 2015 when it will employ about 7.8 million people, according to the India Semiconductor Association (ISA).

Market drivers
Much of this growth is expected to be in the embedded and communications markets, with rapidly growing retail automation, industrial electronics, consumer electronics, wireless infrastructure, medical products and automotive segments driving the embedded market.

The embedded services industry in India fetched $3.7 billion of the $4.6 billion IC design revenues of the country in 2006. ISA expects that embedded software will account for $11.8 billion in 2010, and 84 percent of the engineering workforce that year will be working with embedded software.

India is on the edge of a huge market opportunity in the embedded computing segment, where increasing attention from some of the world's largest embedded device and software suppliers is beginning to shift into high gear from a design and development perspective.

Climbing the value-chain
Indian embedded companies have largely focused on embedded software development. They are now looking to move up the value chain toward developing intellectual property, and providing reference solutions and system architecture development services.

The challenges in providing new products and services have increased with growing system complexity. Engineers now have to deal with multiple parallel program threads in systems employing multicore or multiprocessors. For instance, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Intel Corp. are likely to ship processors using a mix of x86 and graphics cores some time next year, with core counts reaching eight or more per chip.

To support the embedded industry, the April 1, 2008 EE Times-India Community Newsletter focuses on embedded systems. We cover RTOS synthesis and recount one author's experience of using the SynthOS software synthesis tool to generate an embedded RTOS. The newsletter's In Focus section carries a technical paper on real-time measurement, control and communication using IEEE 1588, a real-time networking synchronization protocol that was originally designed for local systems in instrumentation and industrial applications but is now finding use in communications. Find out about the trends in designing embedded systems with Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture from Stephen Huang, vice president of Adlink Technology Inc.

And you can ask questions or discuss embedded technology at forum.eetindia.co.in/FORUM_LIST_1000039192_0.HTM.

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