CHIP FIRM AMD already has a couple of offices in Bangalore, but the firm said it has just opened a silicon design and R&D centre in the city.

The firm is planning to move into a 52,000 square foot facility, but didn't say how many people will be employed there.

However, it did say that Bangalore engineers are already working on design and optimisation of its 45 nanometre quad core "Shanghai" chip.

The same Bangalore engineers also worked on Barcelona, said AMD. Bangalore is home to a large Intel site, and next year a new airport is proposed for the city.

This will make life difficult because it will take about three hours to get from that airport into the main high tech areas, rather than the 15-20 minutes the current airport takes. µ