New semiconductor policy soon: STPI Director

Bangalore, Jan 8: Software Technology Park of India (STPI) Director J Parthasarathy today announced that the Government will soon come out with a new semiconductor policy to give a boost to the industry.

''The new semiconductor policy, which will be announced shortly, would provide further momentum to the industry,'' he said at the inauguration of the three-day 20th edition of VLSI Conference here last night.

Mr Parthasarathy said IT exports from India would leap from US Dollar 24 billion this year to 40 billion Dollar in 2007-08. The semiconductor sector would see a similar jump from its current 1.2 billion Dollar worth exports.

Referring to shortage of talented manpower being faced by the IT industry, he said ''we are aware of the acute talent challenge and have convened a meeting next week with heads of all the local technical universities and the IT Secretary to discuss the possibility of integrating VLSI into regular engineering curriculum.

The industry at its current growth level will need 10-12 times the current manpower level of 65,000 engineers.'' Xilinx Inc Chief Executive Officer Wim Roelandts, in his keynote address, said the stagnation that the technology industry went through post the 2000 meltdown was over and the industry would witness an unprecedented momentum starting 2007.

He called upon Indian companies not to limit innovation to engineering.

Over 1,500 delegates from India and abroad were participating in the conference, which provided a forum for researchers and designers to present and discuss various aspects of VLSI design, electronic design automation, enabling technologies and embedded systems. The conference had a status of IEEE conference with Innovation, Education and Research being the focus.

UNI