AMD's Strategic Push in India: Revolutionizing AI and Computing

Every AMD product goes via India team: Lisa Su

When asked about supercomputers being built here in India, Su said, We are planning to (formally) announce the two supercomputers, very shortly. They are (being built) in partnership with the government around weather forecasting. This is an example of the types of the right investments happening in India.Lisa Su, chair, and chief executive officer (CEO) of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)--credited with reversing the fortunes of the American chipmaker -- is now taking the fight to industry leaders like Nvidia. In an interview with ET Su said that the $ 22.7 billion firm whose market cap has soared to $223 billion, is also building two supercomputers in India. It could also enhance investments in the country beyond the $ 400 million announced last year, said the 55-year-old executive. AMD has completed 20 years in India, what role do you see the country playing in the era of AI? India is critical to everything that we do at AMD. We have over eight thousand people here, which is about 25% of our global workforce. Every product that we build in every market segment - our data centres, PCs, or embedded business, goes through our team here. We are building a couple of supercomputers in India that we are proud of. This is a key region for us, both from a business as well as a talent growth standpoint. Can you tell us more about the supercomputers that are being built here? We are planning to (formally) announce the two supercomputers, very shortly. They are (being built) in partnership with the government around weather forecasting. This is an example of the types of the right investments happening in India. How important is India as an R&D hub and a sales market for AMD? We will continue to grow R&D in India and invest in AI (worldwide). We made a commitment last year to invest $400 million in India over five years for R&D, it's very likely that we will reach that sooner, given the rate and pace of investment and innovation that is going on. I am here to inaugurate the second phase of our Technostar campus here at Bengaluru, the largest site across all of AMD, globally. That gives you an idea of our commitment to India. Whether it is hardware, software, systems, all these skill sets are very prevalent here. We have also grown significant leadership and have doubled our headcount here in the last three years. The Indian (technology) ecosystem is one of the fastest growing and most exciting regions in the world. A lot has been riding on hardware - building large language models (LLMs), compute power, GenAI is expensive, what is your view? It is a good question. I think you must take a step back and look at the power of technology. AI is the most important technological innovation we have experienced in the last 50 years, in my career lifetime. Because of this, investments will continue. We believe the market for AI, especially the cloud or overall, AI accelerators, TAM - total available market - will grow to $500 billion by 2028. The growth rate is well over 50% compound annual growth rate, and we are still at the initial stages of using AI. From an AMD standpoint, our role is to continue to put out the bleeding edge products that will allow the AI to get even more efficient and costs will come down over time. Also, more people can adopt AI going forward. I am a big believer; this is a 5-10-year high growth opportunity and the entire ecosystem is also working towards making each part of the ecosystem stronger. But questions are now being raised on whether there is enough ROI on the investments? We are using AI within AMD and seeing good use cases across both our engineering as well as non-engineering efforts. When you think about the whole chip design effort, our best chips today are 150 billion-plus transistors, and (each one) must be right. Using AI to help us design chips faster is a significant use case, and we are already seeing the beginnings of ROI there. We should not expect instantaneous ROI. You must start the investment, but you will see the ROI over the next several years. India has been a tech powerhouse through IT, R&D and GCCs. With AI automation, will it continue to have its talent edge? This is often a question whether AI will replace a lot of workers. The best use of AI is to take the most repetitive tasks and relieve our workforce (to) focus on higher value-added tasks. I see an opportunity for companies in India to move up the food chain. That's true for firms across the world as well. And there is also the opportunity to really upskill the workforce, AI training should be a key part of the conversation. You have turned around AMD from a flagging chipmaker to a serious market challenger. What is your vision for the next five years? If you look at the rate and pace of adoption of high performance, speed of technology, we have made tremendous progress. If you look at some of the resources, we are in the mid-thirties percentage of market share in the world in Server CPUs. We are higher than that in India. When you look forward, my goal for AMD is to continue to offer the leading-edge innovation around high-performance processing and AI. You are one of the most successful women leaders and among top paid CEOs. If you had to give one advice to women leaders on how to make it big, what would that be? Well, this is a great time for women in tech. The thing that I like the most about technology as a career is it's very black or white. When you build a product, it either works or it does not work, and it allows you to show your own capabilities. So, my advice to women is to continue to look for those great opportunities. One advice that I got when I was young was to run towards problems, really volunteer for some of the most important projects, the hardest projects, and that would be my advice to women today. There are so many interesting technology products and projects out there. This is an opportunity to really volunteer and work on some of these. Beena Parmar contributed to this story.

Every AMD Product Goes via India Team

Lisa Su, chair and chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), who is credited with reversing fortunes of the American chipmaker, is now taking the fight to industry leaders like Nvidia.Lisa Su, chair and chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), who is credited with reversing fortunes of the American chipmaker, is now taking the fight to industry leaders like Nvidia. Su tells Surabhi Agarwal that the $22.7-billion firm, whose market cap has soared to $223 billion, is building two supercomputers in India. It could also enhance investments here beyond the $400 million announced last year, said the 55-year-old executive. Edited excerpts. AMD has completed 20 years in India. What role do you see the country playing in the artificial intelligence (AI) era? India is critical to everything we do at AMD. We have over 8,000 people here, which is about 25% of our global workforce. Every product we build in every market segment -- our data centres, PCs or embedded business -- goes through our team here. We are building a couple of supercomputers in India that we are proud of. This is a key region for us, both from a business as well as a talent growth standpoint. Tell us about the supercomputers being built here... We are planning to (formally) announce the two supercomputers very shortly. They are (being built) in partnership with the government, around weather forecasting. This is an example of the types of the right investments happening in India. How important is India as a research and development (R&D) hub and sales market for AMD? We will continue to grow R&D in India and invest in AI (worldwide). We made a commitment last year, to invest $400 million in India over five years for R&D; it's very likely we will reach that sooner, given the rate and pace of investment and innovation. I am here to inaugurate the second phase of our Techno star campus in Bengaluru, the largest site across all of AMD, globally. That gives you an idea of our commitment to India. Whether it is hardware, software or systems -- these skill sets are all very prevalent here. We have also grown significant leadership and doubled our headcount here in the last three years. The Indian (technology) ecosystem is one of the fastest growing and most exciting regions in the world. A lot has been riding on hardware -- building large language models (LLMs), compute power or GenAI is expensive. What is your view? It's a good question. I think you must take a step back and look at the power of technology. AI is the most important technological innovation we have experienced in the last 50 years, in my career lifetime. Because of this, investments will continue. We believe the market for AI -- especially the cloud or, overall, AI accelerators, TAM (total available market) -- will grow to $500 billion by 2028. It is well over 50% compounded annual growth rate, and we are still at the initial stages of using AI. From an AMD standpoint, our role is to continue to put out bleeding edge products that will allow AI to get even more efficient. Costs will come down over time. Also, more people can adopt AI, going forward. I am a big believer; this is a 5- to 10-year, high-growth opportunity. The entire ecosystem is working towards making each part stronger. But questions are now being raised on whether there is enough return on investment (RoI)? We are using AI within AMD and seeing good use cases across both, our engineering as well as non-engineering efforts. When you think about the whole chip design effort, our best chips today are 150 billion-plus transistors, and (each one) must be right. Using AI to help us design chips faster is a significant use case, and we are already seeing the beginnings of RoI there. We should not expect instantaneous RoI. You must start the investment, but you will see RoI over the next several years. India has been a tech powerhouse through IT, R&D and global capability centres. With AI automation, will it continue to have its talent edge? This is often a question -- whether AI will replace a lot of workers. The best use of AI is to take the most repetitive tasks and relieve our workforce (to) focus on higher value-added tasks. I see an opportunity for companies in India to move up the food chain. That's true for firms across the world as well. And there is also the opportunity to really upskill the workforce. AI training should be a key part of the conversation. You have turned around AMD from a flagging chipmaker to a serious market challenger. What is your vision for the next five years? If you look at the pace of adoption of high-performance computing, the speed of technology, we have made tremendous progress. If you look at some of the resources, we are in the mid-thirties in world market share for server CPUs. We are higher than that in India. When you look forward, my goal for AMD is to continue to offer leading-edge innovation around high-performance processing and AI. You are one of the most successful women leaders and among top paid CEOs. If you had to give one advice to women leaders on how to make it big, what would that be? Well, this is a great time for women in tech. The thing that I like the most about technology as a career is that it's very black and white. When you build a product, it either works, or it does not work, and it allows you to show your own capabilities. So, my advice to women is to continue to look for those great opportunities. One advice that I got when I was young was to run towards problems, really volunteer for some of the most important projects, the hardest projects, and that would also be my advice to women today. There are so many interesting technology products and projects out there. This is an opportunity to volunteer and work on some of these. Our role is to continue to put out bleeding edge products that will make AI even more efficient. Costs will come down over time... This is a 5- to 10-year, high-growth opportunity.