Renesas Technology is going to substantially increase the number of engineers it employs in R&D in China and Vietnam.
“We are very aggressively increasing then number of engineers we have in China," Satoru Ito, chief executive officer of Renesas, told Electronics Weekly at Electronica.
"We currently have 300 engineers there and we plan to increase that to 500 to 600 by 2008. In Vietnam, we have 100 engineers and intend to increase that to 500 by 2008.”
Asked why Renesas went to Vietnam, Ito replied: “I thought China would be the key area later it seems that China is not going to be a very cost-effective region and I thought we needed another area which would be cost-effective for a longer time."
In China, the Renesas R&D team focuses on microcontroller product design. The main reason for being there is to tailor product to the local market applications. “To make good inroads into China we need lower-end product," said Ito.
In the Vietnam R&D centre, the focus is on SOC design for the worldwide market. “A lot of engineering work is required, for instance in SOC," said Ito.
The Vietnam experience has been very positive for Renesas. “We were the first semiconductor company to establish an R&D centre in Vietnam so we had the luxury of having the pick of the best engineers," said Ito.