Hyderabad: Micron Technology India, which is continuously making efforts to bring in innovation in the semiconductor space sees its Hyderabad operations playing a key role in developing cutting-edge technologies.
The company is enhancing its engagement with the startup community and academia for boosting research and development, according to a top official.
In an exclusive interview, Anand Ramamoorthy, MD, Micron Technology India, told Telangana Today, “We broadly have three sets of teams comprising- sustenance (high-volume segments with large customer base), current programmes and projects, and technology development. The technology development team which is future-centric is looking at a new series of memory and other products, backed by 100 engineers in Hyderabad focusing on cutting-edge technologies, where products may get into production may be in the 3-5 years horizon.”
The company’s initiative Micron University Research Alliance (URAM) has roped in 12 top engineering institutions in India (including IIT and IIIT Hyderabad) in the first phase to focus on data science, memory research, internet of things and system-level development. Micron is backing the initiative with investments and resources to support innovation and development. There are also plans to establish a centre of excellence (CoE).
On startup engagement, he said, Micron India will be keen on supporting in three ways- investing in promising technology startups; working with IoT startups and artificial intelligence accelerators in relevant areas of Micron; and the hybrid model. The company is currently focusing more on the second model.
Expanding footprint
The company which has signed up a large SEZ space of 1.03 million square feet at Phoenix ’s Tech Zone in Nanakramguda, Hyderabad will have 5,000 employees in 2-3 years. Micron currently has 14 centres of excellence in the city, in varied domains such as data sciences, smart manufacturing, design, mobile controller, internal IT, consumer products and others.
“We have added 800 seats in Hyderabad in the Covid period. The city continues to be our headquarter site for India operations. We have a smaller site in Bengaluru with a focus on enterprise portfolio, where we develop 3D cross points (cross between NAND and DRAM).
About 93 per cent of our employee base is in Hyderabad and seven per cent is in Bengaluru. Hyderabad will continue to be our prime base in India. There are no active plans to spread to other cities with new centres,” he added.
The Indian entity has completed two years of its operations after its incorporation. The company is touching 2,000 employee-mark this quarter and aiming for hiring 5,000 in a couple of years from now. The company’s college hiring has tripled in the last two years. It also ensured diversity with 50 per cent women candidates through campus hiring.
Multi-domain capability
Almost 70-75 per cent of engineering functions and capabilities have a footprint in India cutting across design, validation, firmware, quality and testing with a high co-location index. “Despite a late entrant into India, compared to the peers in the semiconductor space, we managed to improve our position in delivery and innovation. We have tripled our patent activity,” Ramamoorthy added.
The company globally has a fairly secular footprint, selling memory and storage to automotive, mobile, cloud, data centre and internet of things sectors. The company has recently rolled out a 176-layer 3D NAND chip (memory used in smartphones and personal computers) for which the Hyderabad team contributed significantly. It also came out with the fastest discrete graphics GDDR6X memory in collaboration with the Nvidia which will be used in gaming and PC consoles.
When asked if the company sees new opportunities with the growing data centre segment in India, he said, “Both due to the Atmanirbhar Bharat campaign and the focus on the sovereignty of data centres, we see growth opportunities for our NAND and DRAM products. India remains one of the fastest-growing markets for Micron globally.”
