Bristol becomes centre for chip design

“We are currently recruiting but it’s not easy,” says Rupert Baines, v-p of marketing at picoChip in Bath. “We are working in a really specialised area doing leading-edge stuff and looking for very high calibre, experienced people,” he adds.

The company develops multi-core chips and software for telecoms networks, from 3G and LTE (Long Term Evolution) to WiMAX. “There’s not many of those around the globe and this is probably one of the better places in the world to find that skill set, but even so it’s difficult. We have been growing very quickly, from 40 to 120 people in two years, but that’s stabilising,” says Baines.

Another start-up expanding fast is Icera Semiconductor in Bristol, which recently set up a design centre in Cambridge to attract software engineers.

“We have slowed the head count ramp in Bristol and I think it’s getting harder to find good people,” says Nigel Toon, vice president of marketing at 100-strong Icera. “But we are still getting people to move to Bristol. It’s an attractive place and the cost of living is less than in the South East, so people are prepared to move. We also have people commuting from Marlborough and Swindon down the M4, and Cheltenham and Taunton on the M5 as the communications links are really good.”

Femtocell developer Ubiquisys in Swindon has doubled over the last 18 months to over 70 people. “There are certain skills there are a lot of in the area, coming from companies such as Motorola and Lucent,” says Will Franks, CTO and founder. “And because of the manufacturing capability built up in South Wales it has been easy to find the right consumer manufacturing experience.”

Other skills are not so easy to find. “Software has been reasonably easy but we have had to get people in from India because we just couldn’t get the people we needed here,” he points out. “We have consciously decided to do our development work in the UK despite a lot of economic pressure to do it in India or China, but you don’t gain on time to market and that’s a cost as well.”

Some roles are harder to find. “The system engineering side is more difficult to recruit for and we have people spread around Europe but that’s also useful as they go to see customers,” he adds.

Part of the advantage of the region is lots of exciting, established start-ups such as Icera, picoChip, XMOS Semiconductor, 3Dlabs, ClearSpeed Technology and Nanotech Semiconductor, alongside larger companies such as STMicroelectronics, Broadcom, Motorola, Intel, and Zarlink.

“A lot of people like working for a Google-backed start-up, and we have recruited three or four people who have chosen to move to the region,” says Franks at Ubiquisys.

While many of these companies in the powerhouses of Bristol, Bath and Swindon continue to expand, other areas have been hit badly over the last few years. Down in Paignton in Devon, the closure of the Nortel plant and the slimming down of Bookham meant the industry lost a lot of skills. But things are looking up, says Adrian Sheen, business manager at the Torbay Innovation Centre.

“We were left with a lot of people, but the prospects are good with people like Syntech recruiting at the moment,” he says.
Syntech Technologies in Paignton designs and manufactures RF and analogue equipment under contract such as traffic systems and telematics. “I think there are signs of a resurgence, but in a different way from the Nortel days,” says Sheen. “Now we have a lot of small companies doing niche activities and energising the supply chain.”