Altera Corporation and RV-VLSI partner to setup Innovation Lab, first of its kind facility in India

June 24, 2011 - PRLog -- Altera Corporation, a pioneer in programmable logic solutions, headquartered in San Jose, CA, USA, and India’s RV-VLSI, a premier research and training center, a unit of the Rashtriya Shikshana Samithi Trust have forged a partnership to set up an Innovation Lab, the first of its kind facility in India, involving a joint investment worth US $ 1 million.

The Innovation Lab will promote the use of advanced design practices among corporates, academic research institutions, and students, thereby fostering an ecosystem for product creation; enhancing job opportunities for IT professionals, and familiarizing Altera products to Indian customers.

Altera and RV-VLSI entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to facilitate:
•   Setting up of state-of-the-art Innovation Lab to promote research, faculty enrichment and skill upgrading of students.
•   Recognizing RV-VLSI as the preferred training partner for Altera’s Indian customers on the company products.

“Altera is pleased to announce the establishment of a new Joint Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) / System-on-a-Programmable-Chip (SOPC) Lab centre at RV-VLSI Bangalore, towards the goal of supporting engineering education in India. The opening of this centre with RV-VLSI reaffirms our commitment to work with Indian universities and we hope that it will enable students to have improved access to the latest technologies that are used in the industry,” Dr. Stephen Brown  Director – Altera Worldwide University Program, Altera Corporation, USA.

RV-VLSI, which is managed exclusively by industry professionals, will greatly benefit from the partnership. “The Innovation Lab will enable the student community and teaching faculty to apply their creative minds to develop low cost India-centric products, especially with respect to healthcare, communications, defense, infrastructure and green energy,” said S Venkatesh Prasad, CEO, RV-VLSI.

Altera will provide the technology know-how, software and hardware pertaining to their key products to the Innovation Lab. Students can gain experience in using these tools, thereby enhancing their qualifications for better job prospects.

“Every year tens of thousands of engineering graduates enter the job market with little or no exposure to technology. Consequently, a significant number moves towards IT services companies. The Innovation Lab will provide such students with access to technology, and in the process promote research paper publications in international conferences as well as enhance high-end technology jobs. The Lab will complement the theoretical knowledge acquired by the students by offering practical training,” pointed out Prasad.

In addition, the Innovation Lab will provide a boost to Phd programs in VLSI and Embedded System domains. The technology professionals will immensely benefit from attending the Altera-approved corporate training, enabling them to adopt new advanced technology seamlessly.

“I am very excited that we were able to work with RV-VLSI to arrive at this partnership.  Altera is committed to promote the cause of technology based education, meet customer’s training requirements on FPGA, Programmable logic solutions and build the semiconductor ecosystem in India. I firmly believe this partnership will address the needs of industry and academia and will bridge the Industry academia gap. We look forward to extend the necessary support required to promote Altera technology in engineering design industry and university campuses in India,” said Ganghataran Gopal, Country Manager, Altera India.

The tie-up also paves the way to work closely with engineering colleges to set up Competency Centers, Centers of Excellence and Nodal Centers and help faculty gain industry experience and exposure.

“This, we believe, will improve the quality of delivery in colleges. The Lab, in association with various universities, plans to conduct special programs for faculty of engineering colleges to familiarize them with the requirements of the various industry segments and promote problem definition, problem solving, application of concepts to create products,” Prasad added.

The Lab also plans to work closely with universities in India to upgrade the skills of faculty in the areas of VLSI design methodologies and embedded system design.