AMD Sets Up Indian Chip Design Center

Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices said Thursday that it plans to establish a chip design center in Bangalore, India, for use in next-generation designs.

AMD, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., plans to invest approximately $5 million over the next three years to establish the center and ramp up operations, which will initially employ 40 engineers but could be expanded to as many as 120 by the end of 2005. The center will be known as the AMD India Engineering Centre Private Limited.

Although India has become known as an inexpensive source of talent for IT firms, AMD spokesman Drew Prairie said the chip design center was not going to be formed at the expense of American jobs. The design center engineers will work closely with engineering teams in the United States on next-generation processor designs and “derivatives,” and “will help us better factor into our product definitions the needs from customers within one of our targeted high-growth markets,” Prairie said.

“This is not outsourcing,” Prairie said.

“We are expanding operations at all of our engineering design locations, including Sunnyvale, Austin (Texas) and Boston,” Prairie said. “We are planning to hire more than one hundred engineers at our U.S. locations this year.”

The engineering center will also engage in system-level design work carried out in conjunction with AMDs global engineering teams, the company added.

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