Intel hires 500 in India for new chips

After hiring about 500 people in the first six months of 2004, Intel's India development centre is planning to design complete chipsets for the company's $200 million digital home initiative.

"We had close to 1,550 people in our development centre in India in January and now the number stands at 2,000," Intel India president Ketan Sampat said.

As part of the initiative, the India centre of world's largest chipmaker designed graphic drivers of a trio of new Intel Express chipsets (Intel 915 G/P and 925X Express) and several new Intel Pentium 4 processors supporting Hyper-Threading technology.

These products, the first under the initiative, became commercially available today.

"Going forward, we will design entire chipsets under the initiative in a couple of years," Sampat said. Under the $200 million programme, Intel would fund companies worldwide in the networked personal computers and consumer electronics market.

"We are in the middle of evaluating companies in the Asia-Pacific region where we will fund," he said. The company had created a similar fund to support Wi-Fi technology too.

"We will find technology leaders in this phase too," he said.

As Intel's India centre works on cutting edge technologies, it will continue to hire more people in India, he said but refused to put any target for it.

First phase of Intel's India campus in Bangalore, with an investment of $41 million, will be ready by next year. "The work is going on and we will move into the facility by the middle of next year," Sampat said, adding that it would have a capacity of 1,200 people.

For its digital home initiative, Intel is also working with computer makers like Wipro in India.

Meanwhile, Wipro Infotech also launched a new SuperGenius 900 Series of desktop products featuring the new Intel Pentium 4 processors supporting Hyper-Threading Technology and Intel 915 Express Chipset, which were made commercially available today.