India's Wipro Launches Post-GDS Services

BANGALORE, India — Wipro, one of India's largest technology services companies, has extended its portfolio of IC design services include post-GDS services to both fabless semiconductor and IDMs.

Wipro, likely the only Indian services company offering such services, says it has been experiencing a resulting rise in business. The company sees this as a strategic initiative in the semiconductor space, said A. Vasudevan, vice president of VLSI/systems design, at Wipro Technologies, the services arm of Wipro Ltd.

More engineers will be hired to expand this business, especially in the test and packaging lines. The services are offered at its centers in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Pune.

"Using a test chip developed in-house, we have generated a methodology that enables the generation of vectors first time right," Vasudevan said. "Since there is a need to have a successful silicon implementation, Wipro has already qualified its design methodology by taking its own IP through silicon. Continuous investments will be made in expanding the size and the breadth of offerings in this line."

"This will help cut design-to-silicon cycle time and cost of IC design using deep submicron technologies," said Anuj Sharma, marketing manager of VLSI/system design at Wipro. "In the last 18 months we have worked at extending 'EagleWision,' our proprietary design methodology, to increase value for its customers beyond the GDS stage. Along with Indian and overseas firms in the IC manufacturing ecosystem, Wipro is offering both engineering prototype and production support services.

Sharma said these partnerships enable customers to utilize process technologies ranging from 0.35 micron down to 65-nanometer and using packaging from low pin count lead frames like TSSOP and SOIC to advanced packages for applications with small form factors and high-speed interfaces.

"Expertise available within this ecosystem can offer engineering service value to customers in varied application domains," Sharma said.

Customers can access these services, starting with design, using Wipro's architecture, front-end and physical design services. Competency groups focused on design for test, package design, test and product engineering and process have been formed to work with design teams to get designs ready for manufacturing quicker.

"We see the need to offer our fabless and system OEM customer more value for their design engagements with us without them making significant investments or relying on multiple vendors," said Manish Rawat, a business manager at Wipro Technologies.

Engagements in post-GDS with customers in medical, automotive, computing and communication domains have begun. Wipro has executed its design-for-test framework, which uses script based methodology to generate qualified test patterns that run the first time during silicon debug.

"Our design flow has also been used for validating high-pin count flip-chip package designs for meeting mechanical, electrical and thermal constraints of IC and board design specifications, reducing the number of iterations it took to freeze on the customer's IC-Package-board designs," Rawat said.

Saying it used rules-based checklists and internal tools to aid customers analyze process selection problems such as area and power optimization in low geometry processes for selecting the appropriate manufacturing process for applications.