‘Betting Big On Indian Market’

Lisa Su, president & CEO, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) talks to BW Businessworld on innovative product offerings and the Zen processor core.

Excerpts:

You are a veteran of 20 years in the semiconductor industry. Tell us about AMD.
I have worked with industry heavyweights such as Texas Instruments, IBM and Freescale Semiconductor in my 20 years. At AMD, the team designs some of the most complex products ever imagined. I joined AMD in 2012 because I believed that it is one of the few companies with the technology assets, talent, and market position to really lead the industry forward. After four years here, my conviction has only grown stronger. During my time, I have seen success which has always been grounded in delivering great products.

Is this the best time to lead AMD as a brand?
This is definitely the best time to lead AMD. We have a number of new products coming in the next 18 months that have the ability to enable new types of experiences and radically alter the industry landscape. We also have a well-established line of professional graphics products powering visually stunning movies such as Baahubali, and the recently announced Radeon Pro Duo. It is the world’s most powerful graphics card with 16 teraflops of power. It is also amazing when you think that AMD’s products power both Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4, which are providing amazing gaming and entertainment experiences. Finally, there’s a lot of anticipation for our upcoming high-performance Zen processor core, which will be at the heart of many future products that are key to returning AMD into higher performance parts of the market.

What about India expansion plans?
India is one of the high growth markets for AMD, and we have made significant investments to strengthen our capabilities here. In the Asia Pacific region, India is one of the most critical countries for our growth. Our engineering talent has increased significantly in recent years and we now have over 1,000 engineers in Hyderabad and at our Bangalore R&D centres. We are one of the few semiconductor companies, whose operations in India span the entire product design cycle.

What distinguishes AMD from any other brand?
AMD is all about innovation and our biggest game changer has been the APU — Accelerated Processing Unit — the only product in the world that combines Graphics Processing Unit and Central Processing Unit. It would be worth mentioning that only two companies in the market develop and deliver x86 processors in volume (AMD and Intel), only two companies have the expertise to develop and deliver leading-edge 3D graphics (AMD and Nvidia), but only AMD does both.