US chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) is in talks with the Indian government to support its efforts toward the indigenous development of GPUs and is also open to participating in the design-linked incentive (DLI) scheme, a part of the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), once the government opens it to multinational companies.
The company is also looking to help advance India’s semiconductor and AI ambitions by addressing the chip talent gap in one of its key markets.
“There have been some conversations (around indigenous GPUs) but it's too early to share details,” Jaya Jagadish, country head and SVP of silicon design engineering, AMD, told Moneycontrol in an exclusive interview.
India is working on its first indigenous graphics processing unit (GPU) and will unveil a prototype by the end of the year, Moneycontrol reported on May 14. The country aims for commercial readiness by 2030, marking a significant step toward self-reliance in advanced semiconductor technologies.
The Electronics and Information Technology Ministry (MeitY) has given the mandate of developing the GPU to the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), an autonomous body under the IT Ministry.
India might be able to create its own high-end computing chipset in the next three to five years, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw recently said, confirming talks with multinational companies like AMD and NVIDIA to co-develop GPUs.
“We are definitely open to any meaningful partnerships with the government. Government relations is an important aspect for us…We are closely involved with the government. I was the Semicon India Future Skills Talent Committee chairperson, and we provided a framework for taking this raw talent and giving skilled engineers to the industry. We have been partnering with them to address some of these gaps to strengthen the ecosystem,” Jagadish said.
On DLI participation, the executive said the chipmaker would take up the opportunity if it makes sense in terms of partnerships and business sense. “It needs to be meaningful, and it has to play into our relationship with the region. If it makes sense, we are definitely open to looking at it,” she said.
The previous DLI scheme, launched in September 2021 under ISM, offered less than $12 million in net incentives over five years, and only to five selected companies.
Of the approximately 60 proposals submitted to MeitY, only 20 companies met the criteria. Just a few have secured fabrication orders for their design prototypes.
At present, the ministry is working on a new DLI scheme with enhanced incentives.
AMD is also contributing to India’s Rs 10,000-crore AI mission, which has helped push the country’s national compute capacity past 34,000 GPUs. Several shortlisted AI cloud firms are deploying AMD GPUs, alongside those from Nvidia, Intel, nd AWS as part of the programme.
"AMD is closely aligned with the India AI Mission through our open and scalable AI platforms that enable inclusive and impactful adoption. The AI mission in India itself is on a steep growth path. India itself is a rich, developing country. We have a huge number of developers, so I think that's the unique advantage India has, and we will continue to see growth or a surge in AI usage and, accordingly, for AMD solutions. We aim to make our solutions pervasive, where we can customise and provide best-in-class software and hardware solutions,” she added.
$400-million India investment on track
AMD’s $400-million India investment remains on track, with local R&D teams contributing to developing advanced 2nm and 3nm chips aligned with the company’s global roadmap.
“We recently inaugurated phase two of the campus with a capacity of about 3,000-plus engineers. It is the largest R&D center for AMD globally. We also announced we’ll hire 3,000-plus engineers in the next five years, from 2023 to 2028, and I believe we are slightly ahead on that front,” she said.
AMD, which started its design centre in Bengaluru about 20 years ago, now has a headcount of about 8,000 engineers.
“AMD itself has a pretty diverse portfolio. We have CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, software, IPs and SoCs. India has pretty much every business unit present in India with pretty significant ownership and also contribution to AMD’s overall product portfolio. I can proudly say there is probably no product within AMD that comes out without contributions of AMD India engineers,” she said.
India integral to global product portfolio
AMD India is seeing year-on-year growth for its embedded solutions, driven by AI-led demand from the telecom, healthcare, and defence sectors. This demand is further driving adoption of AMD GPU and CPU solutions across cloud and enterprise use cases.
“AI and semiconductors have gained so much more importance in the Indian ecosystem, and the growth has been in accordance with that. So, we continue to grow. We continue to strengthen our ecosystem. AMD India is not just an augmentation centre… we have ownership, and that has led to a lot of good innovation in engineering as well,” she said.
She said AMD is collaborating across the ecosystem with customers, partners, independent software vendors (ISVs), and system integrators (SIs). "A major driver of our expansion has been the growing adoption of AMD technology by the top three hyperscalers operating in India. These organisations rely on our high-performance, energy-efficient platforms to support next-generation workloads and scalable data centre infrastructure," she added.
AMD India’s priorities are fully aligned with global parent, with no separate local goals. The chipmaker drives comprehensive growth across CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, IP, SoC, and software to meet rising market demands, especially as AI fuels an insatiable need for compute power.
AMD India will continue supporting the global portfolio while responding to similar global market trends.
AI adoption is expanding rapidly across sectors like telecom, healthcare, and defence. With its diverse product range and open-source platforms, AMD iswell positioned to make a significant impact, the executive added.
Startup funding, indigenous IPs
The AMD India head welcomed the growing emphasis on semiconductors, noting that the sector was relatively obscure a decade ago but has now gained national importance, partly due to lessons from the covid-era chip shortages.
While the recent focus on semiconductor manufacturing is encouraging, Jagadish said a robust ecosystem, including design, manufacturing, supply chain, and IP creation, is critical for sustainable growth.
“Many MNCs have invested over the last three decades in India, and we are at a point where, you know, we have a very mature design ecosystem. Manufacturing is yet to get there, and it needs design support. Also, we need to have a lot more local designs ready to be manufactured in India,” she added.
She also stressed on the need to foster local startups, develop indigenous IPs and convert India’s engineering talent into highly skilled professionals to fully capitalise on the semiconductor opportunity.
“You need a lot more startups locally to get into complex designs and develop IPs (intellectual properties), which are building blocks for your products. IPs need to be locally registered in India. It's important to focus on the startup ecosystem,” she said.
AMD is also supporting and funding startups through its incubation setup in India, although the company wants to be very selective.
“We are supporting a startup working on low-power interconnect. So, it has to be relevant to the work that we do. It has to make business sense for us. We are definitely open to supporting and funding startups within that framework,” she said.
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