January 18, 2002 — [EB ASIA Online]

IC design Bangalore’s MindTree enters design service alliance with UMC
Bangalore-based design services company, MindTree Consulting Pvt Ltd has entered into a design service alliance with Taiwan-based foundry United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC). The alliance puts MindTree into the full chip design space.

“Many systems houses are agnostic to the foundry in which the chip is fabricated,” said S.N. Padmanabhan, vice president for hardware engineering at MindTree. “They are more concerned about the total cost of ownership of the chip, and they see a benefit in outsourcing turnkey designs to MindTree, who can offer a one-stop solution for turnkey product realization services, which includes enhanced IC design services, IP sourcing and integration.”

Besides being able to offer more complete IC design services to its customers, MindTree could also stand to gain new customers from the alliance, as UMC will promote MindTree as a design partner that can offer turnkey solutions, including both back-end and front-end support to customers bringing SOC designs to market. “By this alliance, MindTree will have access to the full suite of libraries, up to 0.13-micron technology, and will hence be able to move closer to a ‘concept to systems’ offering,” added Padmanabhan. “We will also be able to prototype some of our existing IP through the UMC process.”

A start-up, MindTree has executed designs such as an HDLC controller, a Bluetooth baseband controller, and SOCs for DVD applications, and the company is currently working on wireless LAN and 3G areas. It has offerings in the ASIC / SOC, FPGA and board design areas.