By 2028, American chipmaker AMD plans to invest $400 million in India

28 Jul 2023 , 01:13 AM

The American chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices announced on Friday that it will spend $400 million in India over the following five years and that Bengaluru will become the site of its largest design facility.

Mark Papermaster, AMD’s chief technology officer, made the news at the annual semiconductor conference, which began Friday in Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Other speakers at the main event included Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra and Foxconn Chairman Young Liu.

The Modi administration has been pursuing investments into India’s developing chip industry despite its late entry to establish its credentials as a chipmaking centre.

By the end of this year, AMD stated, it will launch its new design centre campus in Bengaluru, and within five years, it will add 3,000 new engineering positions.

According to Papermaster, ‘Our India teams will continue to play a key role in delivering the high-performance and adaptable solutions that support AMD customers worldwide.’

With the addition of the 500,000-square-foot facility, AMD will have 10 offices in India. More than 6,500 people work for it currently in the nation.

AMD chips are utilised in a variety of systems, including data centres and desktop computers. The company, situated in Santa Clara, California, is also developing an AI processor to compete with Nvidia Corp., the current market leader.

In contrast to its main rival Intel, AMD contracts with companies like Taiwan’s TSMC to produce the processors it designs.

In order to prevent supply chain shocks like those experienced during the epidemic, several countries are now striving for the technologies that TSMC and Samsung, a company from South Korea, have perfected.

India announced a $10 billion incentive package for the chip industry in 2021, but the plan has failed because no company has been able to secure approval for building a fabrication factory, the keystone of Modi’s objectives.

Other investments in India include an engineering centre worth $400 million over several years to be established in June by American chip equipment manufacturer Applied Materials and a $825 million investment in Gujarat by chipmaker Micron for a semiconductor testing and packaging business.

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