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Vinay Sinha, Managing Director, India -- Sales, AMD, in a conversation with IANS spoke about AMD's plans for India. Excerpts:

Q: How are we addressing the IT market in India preparing for next generation EPYC?

A: Over the past decade, the datacenter market has gone through significant transformations. This has largely been driven by three factors -- Data Deluge, AI/MI-led applications and Edge Computing. Even as high performance continues to be the top priority owing to growing volumes of data, applications and technologies, IT leaders today seek newer ways to overcome these barriers through collaborative approaches within the IT ecosystem. Further, as 5G and ICT-fueled hyperconnectivity expands enterprise networks and moves data processing to the edge, technology leaders and engineers must reimagine the data center to stay in the race. The new datacenter ecosystem must respond to the emerging business conditions dictated by a digital world.

AMD EPYC has been making disruptive changes in India with technology; be it in terms of core density, (lower $ per Core), higher performance for modern workloads, sustainability (lower $ per watt) and our advanced security features -- Secure Memory Encryption (SME) and Secure Encrypted Virtualisation (SEV).

AMD caters to a wide variety of industry demands at different price points and performance expectations as well. Taking into consideration customer requirements, AMD aligns our engineering teams and OEMs with each customer to work closely and support the launch of their respective platforms. It is also important to note that some of our existing EPYC solutions (Rome and Milan) continue to co-exist, even as 4th Generation EPYC is added to our server portfolio. Customers who require enhanced levels of density optimisation and performance per watt can transition to 4th Generation EPYC.

Typically for any global product launch, there is a settling-in period and depending on local market conditions the respective OEMs we co-work with would make this available in the India region.

Q: Who do we have in terms of customers and partners in India for 4th gen EPYC?

A: Our existing three generations of AMD EPYC processors -- Naples, Rome and Milan X are implemented and provide cost-effective, scalable solutions to key industries, including Manufacturing, BSFI, Government, IT & ITES. AMD also offers cloud solutions (AMD EPYC powered instances) with hyperscalers such as AWS, Azure, Google and Oracle. Most of our partners and OEMs are currently in the process of readying their platforms for 4th Generation EPYC.

Q: How is your data center business doing in the APAC region, especially India?

A: India remains a priority market for AMD's data center business. We occupy a significant share of the market with our existing line of AMD EPYC offerings.

We see growth opportunities for AMD in data-heavy sectors, including e-commerce, BFSI, government, IT, manufacturing and telecommunications. With the roll-out of 5G networks, we believe that the Telecom sector will be one of the key sectors that will adopt high-performance server CPUs over the next two to three years. They will rely on data processing infrastructure that will allow faster delivery of internet, content and seamless roll-out of a host of next generation 5G applications. We are tapping all these opportunities by working very closely with our ecosystem partners to highlight the value proposition of EPYC server processors to change the economics of Virtualized Data Centre.

Q: Do you think your data center and embedded businesses are strong enough to help AMD weather challenging economic conditions in 2023?

A: Our data center segment has been driving momentum for the brand with a 45 per cent increase in revenue year-on-year as you may have seen in AMD's Q3 earnings. This growth has been led by server processor sales, backed by strong demand for third-generation EPYC processors and initial shipments of our next-generation 4th Generation EPYC CPU to select customers.

Additionally, through consistent execution of our CPU roadmap along with expanded offerings with the addition of the Xilinx and Pensando products to our portfolio we are positive about continuing the momentum.

Q: Amid the softening PC market, what are the plans in the pipeline to ramp up your data center business?

A: Despite the softening PC demand, AMD's overall revenue grew 29 per cent year-on-year to $5.6 billion as our data center, gaming and embedded segments each delivered significant year-over-year growth and performed in line with our expectations.

With the addition of Xilinx's and Pensando's product portfolios, we are also seeing new design win opportunities and deeper engagements with many of our embedded customers based on the expanded breadth of our adaptive SoC, FPGA, CPU, GPU and DPU product portfolios. The technology that AMD offers gives our partners and customers the opportunity to innovate and have a higher return on investment in the infrastructure. They can modernise to newer technology and save, or they can migrate workloads to the cloud and save. We remain on track to further expand our product portfolio in 2023 with upcoming launches.