US-based semiconductor maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) expects demand for chips to increase as the world heads for a megacycle of high-performance computing, driven by a shift to the Cloud and the rollout of 5G networks.
“There is an inflection coming in terms of demand for performance. People have transformed their businesses to run in the cloud, and now we see 5G starting to roll out Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now making its way into every business,” said Mark Papermaster, CTO and Executive VP (Technology and Engineering) at AMD.
These three key factors are driving, what the company views, as a megacycle of data centre computing demand, which will help drive business for the firm.
Recently, AMD announced the launch of its third generation EPYC processor, codenamed Milan, with its India Development Centre playing a significant role in building the server System on Chips (SOCs) and in core IP development.
AMD has about 2,000 engineers in Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
The new processor will help AMD cater to the increased demand as it is optimised for both traditional workloads that rely on a single-core CPU and where workloads rely on many CPU cores, Papermaster said.
“The key change I see coming to drive computation to its next heights are, in fact, what we call heterogeneous computing, where you mix different types of computing devices and accelerators together,” he said.
The reason for this is the emerging workloads of high-performance computing of AI and the 5G rollout. Their computing demands are so high that one type of computing does not give the necessary computation capability.
“It takes CPUs for general-purpose programming applications to take GPUs where you can leverage parallel computation, and it takes specialized accelerators that might be flexible to adapt to new programming approaches. We are intensely focused on heterogeneous computing at AMD,” said Papermaster.
Later this year, AMD will release what will be the world’s fastest supercomputer with the US Department of Energy. Over the past year, it has been working with governments and academia globally to fight Covid-19 challenges, including CSIR, Bengaluru.
Papermaster said the company was in discussions with the Indian government on other similar partnerships. “We started partnering with government agencies and hope to continue to grow our footprint in India in that regard. But it’s beyond that, the emergence of 5G and AI will really present a tremendous opportunity for AMD’s growth in India,” he said.
AMD has a double-digit market share in India and has grown seven-fold in the last two years.
“Each year, it will outpace our growth in any other region,” said Papermaster.
While some regions have pockets of skills in specific areas, all skills are represented here, which, he said, included all the product areas and areas of expertise at AMD, creating an opportunity for accelerated innovation.
The company is partnering with hyper-scalers and all major cloud vendors through which it has a strong footprint in the country.
