Bengaluru gets AMD’s largest global design centre, will house 3,000 engineers

US-based semiconductor design major AMD, on Tuesday, inaugurated a 500,000 square feet design centre here in Bengaluru, which is touted to be its largest in the world.

The facility, which also includes a 60,000 sq ft research and development (R&D) labs,  will host 3,000 engineers focused on the design and development of semiconductor technology including 3D stacking, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML).

The facility in its first phase - with four operational floors that can house about 1,000 employees - marks 25% of the overall $400 million investment announced by AMD earlier this year, the company’s chief technology officer Mark Papermaster revealed. 

“AMD setting up its largest design centre is a testament to the confidence global companies have in India”, said Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister for Railways, Communications & Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India at the inauguration. 

The investment is divided into three parts - the second phase, which will see the addition of 2,000 employees, will be completed in the third quarter of the next year (July-September 2024).

The Santa Clara-headquartered company is looking to expand its workforce by another 3000 employees across various levels by 2028, marking the final stage of this investment commitment in Bengaluru, AMD India head Jaya Jagadish told DH. 

Currently, 25 per cent (~7,000) of AMD’s global workforce is present in India, growing from a handful of employees back in 2004, Jagadish said. India is now the tenth mega-region for AMD sales, she said without revealing the exact revenue share of its India business. 

Apart from Bengaluru, AMD also has offices in Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai and Hyderabad and has also retained its previous facility in Whitefield (Bengaluru).  

India is blessed with (tech) talent and the concerted efforts to establish the country as a semiconductor hub is what drove the major investment from AMD, Jagadish said. 

The campus will serve as a centre of excellence for developing products across high-performance CPUs for data centres, PCs, gaming GPUs, adaptive system on chip (SoCs) and Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for embedded devices. 

“While we have seen good growth and investments in design, India’s manufacturing ecosystem is really at the starting stages. We have the raw talent however, the gap is really in the skill set and there’s a need for the process to convert raw talent into trained” Jagadish underscored clarifying that AMD doesn’t have immediate plans for manufacturing in India. 

“This journey will go further in a methodical and systematic way. We have revised the semiconductor-related course curriculum in about 85 universities and many Ph.D. programmes focused on semiconductor research have come up,” Vaishnaw said addressing the media on the sidelines of the launch. 

India's semiconductor market is expected to touch $64 billion by 2026, almost three times its size of $22.7 billion in 2019, according to a joint report by Counterpoint Research and the India Electronics & Semiconductor Association (IESA).

The country is seeing major interest from global semiconductor players for setting up chip fabrication and assembling plants under the $10 billion subsidy programme.

Experts, however, have pointed out the need for a major thrust on R&D for this technology, which the facility will be able to address.

Union minister for electronics and information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw US Consulate General Christopher Hodges AMD CTO Mark Papermaster along with AMD India team at the inaugural event.