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Home / Product companies / I · Networking, infrastructure and security / Networking and telecom / Networking and telecom chips
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Networking and telecom chips The chips inside the network's equipment Every piece of equipment in Market Segments 1.1 to 1.5 runs on chips. That includes the radio units on a mobile tower, the switches in a data centre, the home gateway on your wall and the satellite terminal on a ship. This Market Segment goes one step further back, to the companies that make those chips.

Their buyers are not operators or offices. Their buyers are the equipment makers themselves, like Ericsson, Nokia, Cisco and Arista. Getting your chip picked as the part inside another company's product is called a design win. Once a chip wins a place in a product, it usually stays for as long as that product is sold. For example, Nokia's 5G equipment uses chips developed with Marvell. Every unit Nokia sells carries those chips for as long as that product line runs. So a chip company can live for years on a handful of design wins.

From a chip design to a working network. Chip companies such as Lattice Semiconductor, EdgeQ and Axiado win a place inside another company's product, called a design win, and sell to the equipment makers, who sell the equipment on to operators and offices. Once chosen, the chip ships in every unit for as long as that product is sold. The chips are designed in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune, and made in factories mostly in Taiwan and South Korea.From a chip design to a working network. Chip companies such as Lattice Semiconductor, EdgeQ and Axiado win a place inside another company's product, called a design win, and sell to the equipment makers, who sell the equipment on to operators and offices. Once chosen, the chip ships in every unit for as long as that product is sold. The chips are designed in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune, and made in factories mostly in Taiwan and South Korea.

Chip work across telecom. Telecom and networking equipment uses many kinds of chips. The main ones are:

  • switching and routing chips, which move traffic through data-centre switches and routers
  • 5G base station chips, which process the signals at a mobile tower
  • optical and connectivity chips, which send data over fibre and between chips
  • programmable chips, which can be configured again after the equipment ships
  • security chips, which check that the equipment is safe before it starts

Most of these come from a few big chip companies. Broadcom and Marvell make many of the switching, optical and 5G chips. (More on them in Market Segment 35.5, Connectivity and wireless chips, in Industry Vertical 35, Semiconductors and chip design.) Intel, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, AMD and Altera make processors and programmable chips used in network equipment. (More on them in Market Segment 35.1, Processor and GPU makers, in Industry Vertical 35, Semiconductors and chip design.) Industry Vertical 35, Semiconductors and chip design, covers the whole chip industry in detail.

Most chip companies, including all three in this Market Segment, design chips but do not make them. The factories are mostly in Taiwan and South Korea. India's part is design, and it is large. Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune have some of the biggest chip-design centres in the world, for the big chip companies and for start-ups alike. India does not yet make chips at large scale, though its first chip factories are being built.

This Market Segment covers three smaller companies. Each makes a chip for one specialist job inside network equipment.

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

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  • Three specialist chips
 Three specialist chips Programmable chips (FPGAs), 5G base station chips and hardware security chips for network equipment

The programmable chip. Network standards keep changing after equipment is installed. A normal chip's circuits are fixed when it is made, so it cannot keep up. A programmable chip, called an FPGA (field-programmable gate array), can be configured again by software, even after the equipment has shipped.

Lattice Semiconductormakes small, low-power FPGAs. They sit in communications and networking equipment everywhere, as well as in industrial machines and cars. Its engineering centre is in Pune. For networks, it sells an FPGA that speeds up Open RAN equipment, and designs for precision timing. Timing matters because mobile towers must stay in step with each other to within about a millionth of a second. Lattice sells these to the companies that make the radio units on mobile towers. (More on them in Market Segment 1.1, Telecom equipment and operators.)

The 5G base station chip. A base station is the electronics that run a mobile tower. It processes the signals to and from every phone nearby. Market Segment 1.1 described Open RAN: an effort to let operators buy a tower's hardware and software from different companies. For that, operators need base station chips that are not tied to one equipment maker like Ericsson, Nokia or Samsung.

EdgeQis building one. It is a start-up with a large share of its engineering in Bengaluru. Its product puts a 5G base station's processing onto one programmable chip. It also has a version for small cells, the small, low-power base stations used indoors or in busy streets. Around the chip it offers a software-defined radio platform, where much of how the radio works is set by software, as in Market Segment 1.5. EdgeQ sells to operators, equipment makers and companies building their own private 5G networks. Its future depends on how far Open RAN spreads.

GreenWave Radios also makes chips for the radio units on 5G towers. (More on it in Market Segment 1.1, Telecom equipment and operators.)

The chips for open towers.

If Open RAN spreads, chips like EdgeQ's are what open towers will run on. If it does not, base station chips will stay with the big equipment makers and the big chip companies in Industry Vertical 35, Semiconductors and chip design. So this frontier is a bet on Open RAN, from Market Segment 1.1.

The security chip. Attackers don't always go after the software you can see. Some attack servers and network equipment at a lower level, in the firmware and the boot process. Firmware is the basic software built into the hardware. The boot process is what runs first when the equipment is switched on, before the operating system starts. An attack there can be very hard for the operating system to spot. The answer is a dedicated security chip. It checks that the equipment is running exactly what it should, before anything else starts.

Axiadomakes this chip for data-centre servers and network equipment. It has engineers in Bengaluru. Most of the security industry protects equipment with software. Axiado does it in hardware. The security chip checks first. When the equipment is switched on, a security chip such as Axiado's checks that the firmware is exactly what it should be. Only then does the boot process run, and the operating system starts last. An attack in the firmware or the boot process is very hard for the operating system to spot, so it is caught before anything else starts.The security chip checks first. When the equipment is switched on, a security chip such as Axiado's checks that the firmware is exactly what it should be. Only then does the boot process run, and the operating system starts last. An attack in the firmware or the boot process is very hard for the operating system to spot, so it is caught before anything else starts. That is where the network's chips come from. A few big chip companies make most of them. Specialists like these three make chips for narrow jobs: reconfiguring equipment, running an open tower, or guarding equipment before it starts.
Who they hire

Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What networking and telecom hires for.
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