Indian design centres touch every aspect of our chip design globally: AMD CTO Mark Papermaster

Indian design centres of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) touch every aspect of chip design globally, its global chief technology officer Mark Papermaster told ET in an interaction.

The Santa Clara-based semiconductor company on Tuesday inaugurated a new AMD Technostar campus, its largest data centre globally, in Bengaluru.

Even with the company’s new AI chip, which has a complex design with over 100 billion transistors, India has a role in each of these subsystems, Papermaster said.


“It’s a system on a chip,” he said. What you have in an AI chip is an entire computer filled with chips including CPU and GPU, “and the circuitry required to interconnect those elements in a very high rate and speed”. “And India has a role in each of these subsystems,” Papermaster said.

AMD has been in the country for over two decades and the team has strong competencies, he said.

On the differences between the Indian and Chinese markets, the AMD CTO said the opportunities would depend on the economic growth of the geography.

In China, AMD has a strong market for PCs, gaming, and data centres. “We have design teams in China which are also very strong,” he said.

“The opportunity in any geography is really based on the growth of the geography. We intend to grow our business commensurate with the opportunity of their economic growth and the markets that we serve,” he said.

The company’s strategy is to grow across all major economies across the world, Papermaster said. “Rather than compare and contrast, it’s really a matter of studying each geography where there’s a growth opportunity and how we best match up our portfolio to those growth opportunities,” he explained.

Diversification beyond China

Amidst the growing ‘China plus one’ strategy and diversification being followed by multinational companies globally, which includes semiconductor companies, Papermaster said, “My view on the diversification is largely around manufacturing risk… Whenever you have a concentration in any one geography of manufacturing, it creates a continuity risk if there is a disruption. Disruption could be geopolitical, or due to natural events like earthquakes. So, de-risking the manufacturing supply chain is a focus of AMD and all multinational companies at this time.”