Interview with Rohith Gopalakrishna, Country Sales Manager, Adaptive and Embedded Computing Group, AMD India about product innovations, applications, India market and future plans
1. What are some innovative applications of AMD’s technology that are making a significant impact, in the embedded market?
AMD’s cutting-edge technologies are revolutionizing the embedded market across a wide range of applications. Our products play a crucial role in sectors such as 5G radios, healthcare devices, satellite systems, and railway safety equipment. With a robust portfolio and advanced software development platforms and tools, we provide comprehensive support to customers in these diverse industries.
India’s adoption of 5G in 2022 has positioned it as one of the largest deployments of 5G systems globally. At India Mobile Congress 2023, we showcased over ten 5G radio products equipped with AMD hardware, demonstrating our leadership in this field. Additionally, AMD is at the forefront of the aerospace and defense markets.
Notably, in 2023, AMD devices powered critical subsystems in the Vikram lander during ISRO’s successful Chandrayaan 3 mission. Moreover, AMD is actively involved in the modernization of Indian Railways. Our safety-compliant hardware and software are instrumental in transforming and enhancing railway systems, contributing to the sector’s modernization efforts. Through these initiatives, AMD continues to drive innovation and support technological advancements in India.
2. How are these applications different and exciting and what are the growth expectations?
These applications demand high performance, low latency, and robust functional safety and security, all of which are integral to AMD devices. Our products are specifically designed to meet these challenging requirements, making them an ideal fit for such advanced applications. With continuous infrastructure development, most of these market segments are anticipated to experience significant industry growth in the coming years and AMD is well positioned in these segments. For example, in the healthcare sector, AMD machine learning (ML) inference has revolutionized the early detection of critical ailments by identifying anomalies in X-rays, ultrasounds, and digital pathology. Likewise, in strategic sectors such as public safety and homeland security, we enhance applications by integrating artificial intelligence with existing vision systems. Additionally, in the railway industry, applications like train collision avoidance systems require a high level of functional safety support in both hardware and software. AMD is poised to meet these critical needs as the deployment of such systems across India becomes increasingly imminent.
3. How is AMD different from competitors with respect to product strategy?
AMD offers a comprehensive and diverse range of products including CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and adaptive SoCs, specialized solutions tailored for edge, cloud, and data center environments, along with System on Modules (SOMs) all designed for high energy efficiency and low total cost of ownership. Whether it is gaming to sophisticated data center demands this product lineup ensures AMD meets these diverse computing requirements without compromising on performance while optimizing power consumption. AMD’s SOMs (System on Modules), such as Kria for edge AI applications, and adaptive SoCs like Versal AI Edge series for AI inference, are tailored to meet the specific needs of industries like automotive and aerospace. These products are supported by a robust collection of software tools and applications, enhancing their functionality and integration into various high-demand computing tasks.
4. Can you talk about AMD investment in India and its projected growth?
Our India teams will continue to play a pivotal role in delivering the high-performance and adaptive solutions that support AMD customers worldwide. We announced plans for continued growth in India through an approximate $400M investment over the next five years. The planned investment includes a new AMD campus in Bangalore, Karnataka that will serve as the company’s largest design center, as well as the addition of approximately 3,000 new engineering roles by the end of 2028.
5. Which are the partners you tied up in India and the key markets?
We have established partnerships with a variety of entities including the government, telecom operators and OEMs, railway systems integrators, upcoming energy and healthcare startups, and private aerospace and defense establishments in India. Additionally, we consistently collaborate with universities and research institutes developing cutting-edge, next-generation products that require high-performance and adaptive compute technologies.
6. What are your product innovations for digital healthcare sector? How it is important for you?
AMD has always led the way in delivering cutting-edge solutions to the healthcare sector by harnessing its high-performance and adaptive computing capabilities. A key innovation is the use of AMD’s high-performance CPUs and GPUs, combined with AMD adaptive SoCs and FPGAs, to accelerate medical imaging processes such as ultrasounds, MRIs and CT scans. This technology significantly enhances image processing and analysis speed, facilitating quicker diagnosis and treatment planning for patients. Additionally, AMD is pioneering the use of AI and machine learning algorithms in healthcare, utilizing their powerful computing capabilities to advance personalized medicine and predictive analytics, ultimately improving patient outcomes.
AMD’s strong commitment to the healthcare industry is further demonstrated through collaborations with leading global and local healthcare equipment manufacturers, particularly those engaged in the ‘Make in India’ initiative. This focus is particularly significant for India, the world’s most populous country, as it strives to become self-reliant (atmanirbhar) in medical devices, aligning with the government’s ‘National Medical Devices Policy’.
7. How are you collaborating with Indian startups and developers, and helping them fostering innovation and providing accessible solutions?
At AMD, we actively engage with startups even before their official formation, collaborating closely with universities to nurture students specializing in SoCs and FPGAs. Under MeitY’s Special Manpower Development Program for Chips to System Design (SMDP-C2SD), AMD has been chosen as the main platform not only to develop more than 50,000 specialized manpower in the areas of VLSI/System Design at B.Tech, M.Tech, and Ph.D. levels but also to design and develop proof-of-concept working prototypes of 15 SoCs, 70 ASICs, and 30 FPGA-based designs. We are also training 113 institutes across the country on AMD technologies.
For the startup ecosystem, we consistently support young and budding engineers with programs like the ‘Swadeshi Microprocessor Challenge’, in collaboration with MeitY, which generated more than four crores in seed funding for startups to turn their ideas into real-world products. Earlier this year, we conducted the Pervasive AI Developer contest, which received over 2600 registrations across India. Participants received complimentary AMD hardware like Ryzen AI PCs, KRIA Robotics Kits, and Instinct Radeon GPUs to develop their ideas into tangible products. Beyond these initiatives, we engage with startups in building intellectual properties, software, and systems on modules through our ‘Adaptive Compute Partner Program’.
8. How are you working to balance energy efficiency and performance aspects in the company’s product offerings?
AMD is committed to enhancing both performance and energy efficiency across our product portfolio, which includes processors and accelerators. Through our comprehensive approach, we aim to achieve significant improvements in energy efficiency, highlighted by our 30×25 initiative. This initiative targets a thirtyfold increase in energy efficiency by 2025, particularly in our server processors for high-performance computing (HPC) and AI. Our AMD EPYC processors are at the forefront of this effort, powering some of the world’s most energy-efficient HPC systems available today. According to the latest Green500 list, AMD now powers 157 systems on the Green500 list of the most efficient supercomputers in the world. These advancements not only align with our sustainability goals but also provide superior performance and low total cost of ownership for our customers. By reducing energy consumption and minimizing environmental impact, AMD ensures that our products deliver exceptional value and support sustainable operations.
9. What is a realistic timeline for wider adoption of 5G in industries in markets like India? How are your unleashing 5G opportunity with your product advancements?
5G adoption in India is underway. As of Dec 2023, India has surpassed four hundred thousand 5G base stations across the country, which makes it one of the fastest nations to adopt 5G. The current use cases of 5G are limited to applications such as video streaming and multi-person video calls. While these uses are valuable, they have not yet translated into a significant premium over existing 4G tariffs, indicating the early stage of 5G adoption. We anticipate this to scale over the next couple of years in industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, automotive, transportation, mining, and agriculture. This expansion will provide the necessary boost to fully leverage the potential of 5G technology in India.
AMD is clearly seeing India’s 5G deployment as a good opportunity for our company, and accelerating 5G Networks in India with our partners in the country. We have a strong and leading radio technology portfolio and leadership in server performance/Watt, and a broad set of technology platforms that are critical for the Digital Transformation of India. We have been collaborating with Indian radio vendors, 5G core vendors, and CU/DU vendors for 5G solutions and software stacks based on a strong ecosystem in India. We also have a large presence in India with over 7K engineers, and we are here to help and support our customers and partners.
10. What are your future plans for India?
We expect sustained focus on strategic areas for the India market such as Defense, Telecom, Railways and IT. We foresee tech localization of defense systems, space systems, railway electronics, and IT products like servers and laptops driving substantial growth for the overall semiconductor industry over the next five years. In addition to this, we anticipate an increase in semiconductor manufacturing jobs in India, offering students diverse career options beyond traditional IT roles.
