AMD’s Largest Global Design Centre Opened In Bengaluru. Will House 3,000 Engineers

The engineers at the Bengaluru unit will concentrate on advancing semiconductor technology, with a focus on areas like 3D stacking and AI.

Semiconductor giant AMD opened its largest global design centre, the AMD Technostar R&D campus, in the southern Indian state of Bengaluru on Tuesday (November 28), as part of a significant expansion of its research and engineering operations in the country. This campus is a key step in AMD's $400 million investment in India over the next five years. This is expected to give a push to the country's ambitions to become a major semiconductor manufacturing hub.

The 500,000 square-foot facility was inaugurated by Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Union Minister for Telecommunications, Electronics, and Information Technology and Railways, intends to house approximately 3,000 AMD engineers. The unit was inaugurated in the presence of key AMD executive, including Mark Papermaster, Senior Vice President of GPU Technologies and Engineering; Brian Amick, Senior Vice President of Central Engineering, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer; David Wang and Andrej Zdravkovic, Chief Software Officer and Senior Vice President of GPU Technologies.

The engineers at the Bengaluru unit will concentrate on advancing semiconductor technology, with a focus on areas like 3D stacking, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

"India's semiconductor program launched under the leadership of Honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi lays strong emphasis on supporting the design and talent ecosystem for semiconductors. AMD setting up its largest design centre in Bengaluru is a testament to the confidence global companies have in India,” Vaishnaw was quoted as sayig in a statement.

According to AMD, the campus is designated as a centre of excellence for the creation of high-performance CPUs for data centres and PCs, data centre, and gaming GPUs, as well as adaptive System on Chip (SoCs) and Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for embedded devices, as per a report by Money Control.

It is pertinent to note that the global semiconductor industry is experiencing a significant shift, led by countries such as TSMC, South Korea and Intel and the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted weaknesses in this global supply chain, as shutdowns and disruptions had widespread impacts across smartphone and other industries. This underscores the crucial need to diversify sources for critical components.