It has been a phenomenal journey. We started with a handful of engineers, and today, there are over 8,000. India was a region where some investment was made in a “we’ll see how it goes” way, but it has now become a central piece for the global organization, where every product has significant contributions from the teams here.

In around 2004, only some knew about semiconductors, and the ecosystem was light. There were hardly a few companies, and AMD was among the first few to invest  in India. There was a lot of scepticism on the software side. IT was well known and had good talent, and companies like Infosys had already made a mark in India, but it was not the same story for semiconductors. We were just warming up.

Today, semiconductors are discussed in every industry forum, and AI has added more curiosity. Now, every sector has the opportunity to use chips. The semiconductor industry has surfaced as one of the most growing and important industries. The government, too, has taken up the strengthening of the semiconductor ecosystem seriously. You see an emphasis on manufacturing and investments coming into the region.

We have been doing design for 30-plus years. It is a well-established ecosystem. About 20% of the overall semiconductor workforce, design-wise, is in India. It has been a fantastic journey from an unknown, obscure field to something that is today on everybody’s mind, including the prime minister, who talks about semiconductors in most of his national addresses. The government policies have made it conducive for people to invest in India.

AI, as a concept, is not new. But with the advent of ChatGPT and large language models (LLM), we must examine what goes behind – the compute. This processing power was not there 20 years ago. Today, companies like AMD have invested in best-in-class GPUs. We talk about data centres, and the unlimited computing  required for training and inferencing. The AI model needs a lot of computing  to work.

Companies like AMD come into play with our high-performance products. With our GPUs, CPUs, and systems, we offer compute power. AI is not a standalone thing and has to be tied with silicon and software. It requires the right silicon and software platform for development, which AMD provides.

The India teams are central to overall AMD. About 25% of our global workforce is here. We have different business units within AMD, like IPs, SOCs, software, FPGAs, and AI. These key ingredients in silicon design need to come together. Significant investments have been made in India in all these categories. The engineering teams can be divided into five major categories. One is the IPs, individual design blocks playing a specific role in the overall chip. Each IP does a certain thing and cannot stand alone as a chip. It has to be stitched together to get the required functionality of a system, called a system on a chip. That is another category of work that happens.

We also need software layers on top, where we optimize how our silicon functions. Broadly, these three are part of the silicon design. And because of our Xilinx acquisition, we have a good group that does FPGAs, or programmable hardware. And of course, AI is pervasive. These are the five broader categories, and we have a significant presence in India in all five that has grown year on year. We started small with each team and have become a large team that can handle end-to-end ownership.

It has gotten better. When we started 20 years ago, finding relevant, experienced talent was not easy. We had to rely on customized training for each team, where we would teach courses. But now, several MNCs like AMD have infused good skills in terms of semiconductor or chip design into the ecosystem. Companies were initially sceptical  and would look at the financial advantage before investing in India. Now, it is more about the talent availability. That is attractive for companies to come and invest. Today, there is an emphasis on building that relevant talent. Even in universities, with students passing out, we find a gap. They need about six months to a year of extra training to adapt to the industry or be industry-ready, but we are trying to close that skill gap.

India holds a special incentive for the investors, the talent availability, and the “can-do” attitude of the teams here. It is not just the design or the manufacturing, but the entire ecosystem has to mature for us to become a front runner in the industry. The policies are conducive for people to come and invest. India has a lot to offer in the future.