AMD working with India telecom gear makers on telecom tech

US chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has teamed up with Indian 4G and 5G equipment makers such as VVDN and C-DoT to offer telecommunications solutions in the country, enabled by its acquisition of programmable logic chip-maker Xilinx.

“We are bringing leading edge, power efficient technologies to India to power radios, servers and compute requirements at data centres and the edge, and even in the RAN (radio access network),” said Gilles Garcia, senior director business lead, data centre communications group, AMD.

AMD has around 10,000 employees in India working on research and development, validation, software development and chip architecture design. The company announced in July that it is investing $400 million in India over the next five years to boost its presence in chip design and software development capabilities.

Garcia said AMD has received good response, with most major local vendors of 4G and 5G players and server makers using its technology. “We are really trying to bring the ecosystem together and raise this ecosystem and help it as much as we can,” he said.

Being a fabless company that does not manufacture its own chips, AMD does not see opportunities in participating in the manufacturing sector as much. However, by helping local vendors such as VVDN in making servers and radio equipment, AMD is indirectly involved in transforming India into an electronics manufacturing hub, said Garcia.

“Because we are fabless, it is helping us in one form or the other because then we can work with the ecosystem and have them use local manufacturing. But since we do not have manufacturing, we are not involved in the Made in India manufacturing aspect of things,” Garcia said.

The company showcased multiple designs that make use of AMD’s radio devices along with a locally-made server using AMD central processing units at its booth in the India Mobile Congress 2023. The company also showcased its AI (artificial intelligence) engine, which happened as a result of its acquisition of Xilinx, the US-based chip maker that can do 5G processing, which Garcia said will be the base for 6G networks.

The next generation of telecommunications – dubbed 6G – is going to be all about artificial intelligence. “How can we improve spectrum and efficiency, massive MIMOs (multiple-input multiple-output) and beam-forming capabilities using AI? I think it will be more around monetisation and user experience that 6G will bring to the table,” Garcia said.