Bangalore: China and Russia are emerging candidates for semi-conductor giant Intel's technology investments, chief executive Craig Barrett said on August 30.

"If you look at Ireland we will continue to invest and Israel continues to be the hotbed of activity," Barrett, who is in Bangalore, told reporters. "In India we will continue to grow the staff.

"There are two other equal candidates for investment. China and Russia. Russia will primarily be looked at from an engineering standpoint, while China from both engineering and manufacturing," Barrett said.

He said this did not mean Intel would relocate facilities from other Asian nations such as Malaysia or the Philippines.

Barrett said Intel would triple its Indian staff strength to 3,000 in line with the recovery in the technology industry, which had been reeling under a slowdown.

"In India, Intel is not looking at just software support but also hardware design, microprocessor design for high end applications," he said.

Barrett said on August 29 that Intel plans to spend $ 130 million over three to five years to increase the number of engineers at its Bangalore operations in Southern India to 3,000 from about 900 currently.

Intel designs chips in India for switches and routers used in directing Internet traffic and also plans to start design work for its Pentium and Xeon processors in the country.

The latest investment is in addition to the $ 150 million Intel has already pumped into its Bangalore chip design center.

Intel also recently set up a $ 25 million research facility in New Delhi, which will house around 2,000 engineers and software experts.

The venture capitalist arm of Intel, Intel Capital, is looking at funding new Indian start-ups, although global venture capitalists are currently wary of making investments, Barrett said.

"We are co-investors but still active and looking for new and exciting technologies. Of the 120 investments in Asia about 25 to 30 companies are from India and an equivalent number in China. India continues to be favourable for investments," he said.

Barrett on August 29 held talks with Indian political leaders including Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in New Delhi.

"It focused on lowering of tariffs and taxes on IT equipment to facilitate increased penetration of computers in India and also to increase the infrastructure development," he said.

Barrett told government and business leaders, India could move beyond its traditional software strength to become a "total IT nation" as the Internet becomes more entrenched.