UK chip firm opens test lab

By OUR CORRESPONDENT

Bangalore, May 8: British semiconductor intellectual property (IP) firm ARM has opened a new million-dollar VLSI test lab at its Bangalore design centre. The company, which raked in revenues of $514 million in 2007, said this is part of its continued investments in Bangalore.

"Combining expertise in IP, test chip design, as well as test engineers in the same geographic location will reduce overall silicon validation cycle time. This will result in an accelerated release schedule for products designed with ARM physical IP," the company's chief executive Warren East said.

ARM grew its Bangalore design team 80 per cent in 2007, broadly signifying India's growing role in aiding the company's global realignment of resources.

"The India design centre has grown faster than anywhere else. We want Bangalore to be the Cambridge of Asia for us - in Cambridge, we do a little bit of everything, we want to do the same here. We had to ramp up our team here in different activities to get to critical mass," he said.

He said that the Indian operations have moved beyond being just a centre for cost arbitrage.

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Pizza firm to enter Hyderabad

By our correspondent

Bangalore, May 8: United Pizza, which owns the US Pizza brand, is all set to open a chain of sandwich bars in the country, starting with the first such 'Toasty Z' in Hyderabad on May 15, Mr Akbar Khwaja, managing director of United Pizza, said.

The business logic for a sandwich chain stems from the fact that there is no such specialised place in India.

"The production cost of a chicken sandwich is not more than Rs 12. However, branded stores price it between Rs 60 and Rs 70. Even by pricing our sandwiches below current rates," says Mr Akbar.