Saturday, April 24, 2004
AMD to set up engg centre in Bangalore
Our Bureau / Bangalore April 23,2004
AMD, the $ 3.5 billion world's second largest chip maker (15 per cent market share) after Intel (70 per cent market share), on Thursday announced its plan to open an engineering centre here, its fourth and first outside the US.
Ajay Marathe, president for AMD operations in India, said the country is critical for addressing the growing markets in Asia and Southeast Asia.
Gopal Krishna, general manager for the centre, said Bangalore was chosen because of its level of entrepreneurial activity in information technology and developed eco-system for VLSI chip designing.
The centre, for which an initial capital budget of $5 million has been planned, will begin with 40 people and go up to 120 by next year. A core team will come from AMD's US engineering centres and some of its members will be Indians relocating, such as Marathe.
In two years, the Bangalore centre will develop deep submicron VLSI design, in collaboration with AMD's US teams, but thereafter it will evolve into a full-fledged processor team which will independently design next generation products.
The independent development capability and the aim of addressing the Asian market come together from the global goal unveiled by Hector Ruiz, head of AMD, this year in Davos.
He termed it the "50x15" goal, seeking to take internet connectivity to 50 per cent of the world's population by 2015. This will mean facing challenging price barriers to meet Asian requirements and affordability.