American chipmaker AMD eyes bigger role in India’s 6G journey

AMD is already actively working in India’s telecom space, both directly and through its $49-billion acquisition of Xilinx

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc (AMD), an American multinational corporation and fabless semiconductor company, wants to be a key partner in India’s 6G journey and has already started working with local partners, universities and the Indian government as part of the Bharat 6G Alliance.

India has AMD’s largest R&D center, which also plays a key role in its communications business. Gilles Garcia, senior director of Wired and Wireless Group at AMD, told Moneycontrol that the company is tapping India's talent pool for 6G development.

“The IIT Madras and all the 5G testbeds are using AMD chipsets for the radio…so all the tests are being done using our technology. Our goal is to share as well the technology that we have today, which is already enabled for 6G,” Garcia said. “India wants to be a leader in the 6G and we want to be part of it, because we have the technology that can really be leveraged from day one now.”

India launched the Bharat 6G Alliance last year as a collaborative platform to bring together the government, industry, and academia to develop 6G technology in India. The aim is to position the country as a leader in shaping the future of 6G.

India has taken a major lead in 6G standardisation by hosting the 10-day International Telecommunication Union-World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly, which concluded on October 24. This marked the first time such an event was held in Asia.

AMD is already actively working in India’s telecom space, both directly and through its $49-billion acquisition of Xilinx. Since the acquisition, the company has increased its engagement with domestic and multinational original equipment makers (OEMs) that supply Indian telecom operators.

“So, through the acquisition, AMD got access to the complete set of Xilinx chips that run into the radio and wired networks. We have got access to what is connecting data centers to CPUs and CPUs to laptops,” Garcia said.

The executive said that the company’s telecom business has grown since Indian telecom operators introduced 5G commercially. “We are in literally all the radios that are Made In India.”

AMD, he said, has built an ecosystem of OEMs that make radios using the company’s chipsets. “We currently have between 45 and 50 radios in the market from different vendors that are using our chipsets.”

The company is also working with the state-run Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) on its radios, which BSNL is using for 4G services in the country.

Asked if AMD would look at shifting parts of its global supply chain to India in line with the Indian government’s push to develop electronics, semiconductor and telecom ecosystem locally, he said: “It could be difficult in the short term because for the time being AMD is using TSMC, which has cutting edge process and there are very little few global foundry vendors that can do that. But the other aspect is, we believe that the value add on the manufacturing can be in all the things between the chipset and the end product.”

“...If suddenly TSMC is investing in India, then why not?,” he added.

The executive, however, said that India has the potential to become a significant part of the global supply chain without having “cutting-edge technology” similar to TSMC with its design capabilities and focus on component manufacturing.

“And, we want to be part of it by providing our chipset and helping the ecosystem to build all the things till the end product,” Garcia said.

AMD’s current focus is helping build an ecosystem in India by working with domestic original equipment makers (OEMs) like Netweb, Velankani, and VVDN, among others, that make high-performance computing (HPC), laptops, servers, and telecom equipment using the company’s chipsets and GPUs.

“We are intentionally building the ecosystem, ensuring that our chip, whatever interoperability, gets to the other chip. We provide OEMs with a lot of recommendations and designs. They [OEMs] use us for many things; we are quite like the main chipsets for them,” Neeraj Verma, Director - APAC & Japan Sales, Datacenter and Communications Group at AMD, told Moneycontrol.

Verma said that the company is ensuring that it has “enough investments in India” to ensure that it can accommodate the superfast growth that is happening locally.

“This is why we are investing in engineering and the environment in India. And we use that talent quite frequently to engage with customers. So, of course, we have our own front business facing technical and self team. But there's a huge number of people in India who would be able to make that successful,” he added.

Last year, AMD announced that it would invest around $400 million in India over the next five years and build its largest design centre in Bengaluru's tech hub. The first phase of its global design centre, the Technostar campus, was inaugurated in November 2023.

The second and final phase will be ready by the end of this year. Once completed, this 500,000-square-foot campus will host over 3,000 engineers in the coming years, bringing AMD’s headcount to over 10,000 employees by 2028.

“This investment is a testament to AMD’s confidence in our exceptional engineering talent and what India has to offer from a semiconductor ecosystem perspective for multinational companies like AMD to grow in the country,” Verma said.