Sun Micro considers chip design facility in India

New Delhi, March 26: Global IT major Sun Microsystems said it is seriously considering the option of setting up a microprocessor design facility in India. "We are considering a hardware design centre in India which would mainly focus on very large systems integration (VLSI) microprocessor designing," Anant Agrawal, vice president (engineering microelectronics) of Sun said.

Agrawal said the company is currently evaluating various cities including New Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai for the centre. "India has a large pool of technical manpower coming from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) that the company wants to tap for its hardware design operations," Agrawal said.

The upcoming centre would focus on compilers, design tools and computer architecture besides VLSI designing, he said, adding the centre would be operational latest by 2003. Sun currently has a hardware design centre in United Kingdom which it started following acquisition of a British firm.

Asked if the company would follow the takeover route or set up its own facility in India, Agrawal said Sun was open to both the options.