Chipmaker AMD has recently acquired Xilinix, a niche player in the semiconductor industry, making it a formidable player in the global semiconductor industry. In an interview, AMD’s Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice-President (Technology and Engineering) Mark Papermaster, talks on how the acquisition is important to the company. Excerpts.

Q

Can you throw some light on the acquisition? Why did you choose Xilinx? How is it going to help the company?

There is a tremendous alignment with Xilinx in terms of our product portfolio as well as technical talent. Post all approvals and closure of transactions, we are bringing over 5,000 engineers from Xilinx into AMD.

When we look at the combined opportunities with the addition of Xilinx, we see an addressable market of about $135 billion in 2023. The technologies that Xilinx works on do not overlap with AMD but are complementary. AMD has capabilities in CPU (central processing unit) and GPU (graphics processing unit), while Xilinx works on FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) and Adaptive Computing. This is a great combination of both technology IPs.

Q

What are the kind of synergies that Xilinx will bring in? What kind of product mix will it offer? How will it help AMD?

If you look where computing is headed, it is not just CPUs or GPUs or FPGAs alone. The future will be driven by a combination of technologies, what we call heterogeneous computing.

Xilinx is giving customers programmability, which is very important in applications such as industrial automation, telecommunications, infrastructure to build 5G networks and medical devices. From datacentres to the edge to end devices, we now have the broadest portfolio of products. f

Xilinx brings an AI engine that is already shipping in the market, has already been proven with customers, and has been licensed by AMD. We have already begun to include the AI engine across the AMD portfolio.

Q

Will Xilinx retain its brand or will it be absorbed into AMD?

Xilinx has become AMD. The Xilinx business will become the Adaptive and Embedded Computing Group (AECG), led by former Xilinx CEO Victor Peng. We have worked together deeply on the integration plan over the last year. As a result of which when we closed on February 14, it was a very smooth transition.

Q

How will the acquisition help AMD’s India operations?

We will be adding over 1,800 engineers in India, most of them being in Hyderabad. The total number of engineers in AMD India will now be over 5,000. 

Q

AMD has been focusing on datacentre business. How will this acquisition complement it?

Both AMD and Xilinx, prior to coming together, had the datacentre as key priority. As we spoke, the last time, the demand for datacentres is growing exponentially. It is in a hyper-growth stage. We have a strong alignment between the two companies. AMD is providing CPU and GPU to datacentres, and Xilinx is providing an adaptive silicon with AI engines to datacentres.

Q

How long do you think the integration will take to complete?

We have been planning this integration for over a year. All our critical functions and the company’s need to operate as one entity was put into place by day one, on February 14. Over the next year, there will be phased integration across key engineering, sales, marketing, finance and HR teams, and the remaining processes will complete by next year.

Q

One of the toughest challenges in an acquisition is cultural assimilation. How do you plan to address that challenge? 

We are very fortunate that cultures of both AMD and Xilinx are very much alike. We also have a highly collaborative culture and we put this to test even in the integration planning that occurred over the course of 2021.

I headed the R&D integration planning with my peer Vamsi Bopanna on the Xilinx side. We worked together closely over the last year, with lead engineers on both sides, and because of the cultural alignment it was a very smooth process.

I expect this seamless integration to continue as we bring the teams closer together across product portfolios.

Q

What are AMD’s hiring plans for India?

The combined talent at AMD India is now about 25 per cent of our global engineering workforce. We plan to hire over 1,000 engineers this year in India. 

Q

Will there be any redundancies in terms of technologies or human resources? How are you addressing them?

Because the portfolios of both companies are complementary, there was very little overlap. The number of redundant jobs were extremely low. If there were redundant jobs, we tried to offer people new positions within the company wherever that was possible.

When you look at most mergers and acquisitions, there are a large number of redundancies, but it was not the case with this merger. What we have is a large number of synergies.