Raza Micro announces India operations

US-based Raza Microelectronics Inc (RMI) has announced the formal launch of RMI's operations in
Bangalore. Started in 2002, RMI develops chips for networking and telecom equipment such as routers, switches and security devices. It was started by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Atiq
Raza, who previously held positions as CEO of NexGen and subsequently COO and president of AMD.

The company currently has a team of 16 engineers in India, which works on the company's processor lines- XLR family of thread processors and Orion family of intelligent access processors. “We have been in India for a year and we want to build a world class team here and integrate the Bangalore team with our team in the US,” said Chairman and CEO of
RMI, Atiq Raza. 

He added that he is keen on building a sizable quality team in India eventually. He did not reveal details of the company's investment plans or the scale of operations. Atiq also said that the company was keen on working with Indian equipment manufacturers. 

Investors like Warburg Pincus, Benchmark Capital, Kodiak and DAG Ventures are backing
RMI, which hopes to give rival biggies like Broadcom, PMC-Sierra and others a run for their money. Raza claims that RMI has managed to pack more transistors (333 million) onto its XLR processor thus beating Intel's Dothan processor, which has 180 million transistors. 

He said that customers could save a lot on cost in terms of replacement of multiple chips, managing supply chain and reducing risk. The company is eyeing networking and telecom equipment manufacturers in China and the US as potential customers.

The XLR multicore chip, which can power switches, routers and telecom infrastructure, can run 32 applications simultaneously. RMI presently has around 130 people working out of the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California.

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