Even major Indian outsourcing companies admit that analog has not been one of the Indian design community's strengths. Some of the reasons can be found in Indian engineering schools, where analog has not been a primary focus. And there have been few venues in which young Indian engineers could accumulate analog design experience. According to the conventional wisdom, the few good analog designers in India work for Texas Instruments, and they aren't leaving.

One strong suggestion to the contrary came last week from QualCore Logic Inc., a Sunnyvale, Calif., interface IP company, which announced it was expanding analog design activity in its Hyderabad facility. The announcement, it turns out, is the result of a carefully planned policy to engage in team building on an international scale.

"It's certainly true that analog talent is in shortage in India," said QualCore president and CEO Mahendra Jain. "But then, that is true everywhere, not just in India." Jain said the state of analog design in India is not unlike the state of digital design 10 years ago. There are some very good engineers, but they are hard to find and even harder to separate from their present employers. But to build whole analog design teams capable of taking responsibility for an IP design requires more than just a hiring binge.

QualCore's strategy started with an acquisition in the United States. In September 2003, the company, which up to that point had been focused on digital IP, acquired Leda Systems Inc. (Plano, Texas). In one stroke of the pen, QualCore became a force in mixed-signal and analog IP. Just as important, the company gained a kernel of experienced analog designers who could train and mentor others.

From that base, Jain said, the company began a multifaceted hiring program. The first step was to find experienced analog engineers in the United States who were of Indian origin and interested in relocating to Hyderabad. There are more than just emotional reasons why someone might consider this, Jain said. "Salaries are lower there, even after the recent increases, but the purchasing power is very different. Perhaps a good engineer earns $30,000. But in terms of the normal cost of living, what costs a dollar here can cost 10 rupees there — and the exchange rate now, with the low dollar, is still 44 rupees to the dollar."

These engineers formed the nucleus of the analog team Jain would assemble. The second step was to start recruiting recent graduates with master's degrees from the Indian university system. "We could get very good graduate-level engineers with training in VLSI design and with board-level analog design skills," Jain said. That was a sufficient foundation on which to build a skilled analog design team.

But the team building involved a third phase as well. Jain rotates his Indian engineering staff through the Sunnyvale facility at regular intervals. Each engineer from Hyderabad spends a few months working with the designers in Sunnyvale. "The designers from Hyderabad get to work directly with our best U.S.-based analog engineers," Jain said. "Then, when they go home, they are working with our core people in Hyderabad. And there is continuous communication between the two design centers. We have the guys here looking into the designs there and discussing them all the time."

Not only do the young designers pick up methodology and skills in the United States, but they also build personal relationships with the U.S. designers that transcend the end of the rotation. "That is one of the important aspects of being physically here for a while," Jain said.

If it takes careful hiring, rotation and constant communication to make an analog team effective in India, is it worth it? Jain emphatically says yes.

To begin with, there's the cost differential between the United States and Hyderabad. "It is definitely shrinking, but it is there yet," Jain said. "There are bound to be inefficiencies in conducting design on two continents, but the cost savings make up for them."

In the long run, though, the story is about more than that. Jain suggested that India may well turn out to be not just a cost play but a center of expertise in analog design. "There is less specific emphasis on analog in the Indian curricula right now — with the exception of a few very strong programs," he said. "But overall, the education there is more analytical than what many U.S. engineers get, and with more emphasis on math. That difference goes beyond university, actually, down to the high school level, and even into family life. Families in India emphasize educational achievement. Many Indian students are effectively multilingual by the time they graduate high school. Those skills are an important basis for learning."

In fact, Jain said, the rotation system has proved so valuable that he has considered rotating the U.S. engineers through Hyderabad. But that presents difficulties, as U.S.-based engineers are often not equipped or inclined to spend time in another culture. In an increasingly global world, that by itself could be a telling difference.