Mark Papermaster, CTO of AMD, told CNBC in a special interview on Thursday that the U.S.-based semiconductor giant is planning to invest approximately $400 million in India to deal with the augmented demand for its products. This will involve setting up the company's biggest design center in Bangalore, and employing an additional 3,000 engineers in India. According to Papermaster, the Indian designers will be responsible for having an impact on almost every product designed by AMD.AMD needs to ensure India is on board if it wants to keep up with the increasing demand for its products. According to its executive vice president and chief technology officer, Mark Papermaster, the firm has a global workforce with its design efforts occurring worldwide. AMD announced plans to invest approximately $400 million in India which will go toward the building of its largest design center and the addition of engineering roles. India is now a part of almost every product AMD develops, and Ruben Roy from Stifel mentioned AMD as the "only viable alternative" to Nvidia's H100 and A100 GPUs.
Roy declared on "Squawk Box Asia" on Wednesday that they are "pushing very hard" and investing heavily in research and development as well as artificial intelligence. During the same discussion, Papermaster emphasized the importance of utilizing the newest semiconductor nodes and their design capabilities to set their products apart from those of the competition. Furthermore, he noted India's importance to their workforce due to the large percentage of the world's population living there. Foxconn's recent announcement that it will be investing more than $600 million for a phone manufacturing project and a semiconductor equipment facility in the state of Karnataka further reinforces this point.
Papermaster mentioned that AMD is investigating options for diversifying its supply chains in the wake of U.S.-China tensions that have had a knock-on effect for companies straddling the two countries. He commented, "We do have a diversified supply base and we intend to explore additional means to extend that diversity." Furthermore, he spoke of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Make in India" initiative, which provides incentives to semiconductor firms to have their products designed, constructed and assembled in India.
In the course of Tuesday's earnings call, AMD CEO Lisa Su highlighted China's significance to the company, and hinted at the potential for an AI chip tailor-made for the Chinese market which would comply with U.S. export limitations, similar to what competitors Intel and NVIDIA have done.
Despite the ongoing PC market slump, AMD reported better-than-anticipated Q2 figures on Tuesday.
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