Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has a global headcount of 27,000 people, including 8,000 engineers in India, said Lisa Su, Chair and CEO of AMD. 25 per cent of the company’s workforce is in India, she said.
“It’s great to have a global workforce because we live in a global market and live in different perspectives. It also gives us that diversity of capability,” said Su, speaking at an event at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) on Tuesday.
Adding that AI might be the most impactful and the highest potential technology, the CEO of the semiconductor giant continued, “Technology can make our lives better, and our businesses more productive. It allows us to solve some important problems and make discoveries. With that as background, AI is the next logical step. It’s not necessarily a new technology. However, in the last 10-15 years, AI was saved only for experts who could use it. That has changed over the last few years.”
Advent of GenAI
She explained that with the advent of GenAI, and LLMs, the technology reserved for experts has transformed into something more tangible. Adding that AI is a technology that can make companies more productive, and discoveries more capable, she said, “It’s an opportunity for us to take computing to the next level, to help us accelerate the power of the technology. When I look at where AI is going, the most important thing in the research around it is to try to accelerate the pace of innovation. And when we look at how software and applications will be built, nobody wants to program for the low level of hardware because it takes too long.”
AMD’s strategy is that the world actually needs an open source software environment and one that is hardware agnostic, Su emphasised.
“We’re investing significantly in the tools, compilers, and extraction layers that will allow you to build this open-source ecosystem. There is tremendous support in the industry for this type of open ecosystem,” the CEO said.
Practically every nation has a semiconductor national policy and role, Su said. “Semiconductors are a global industry and so, supply chain by nature will need to diversify. We’re doing that across the world. Technology collaboration will also continuously be global. We are a global company.”