AMD shows off upgraded portfolio after Xilinx acquisition
The China International Import Expo is a good platform for AMD to reveal an upgraded strategy and product portfolio, after the American multinational semiconductor firm completed the acquisition of Xilinx in the chip industry's biggest deal in 2022.
At the ongoing 5th CIIE, AMD is showcasing processors for green data centers with high performance and energy efficiency and accelerators to make industrial devices smarter. They fit well with China's national strategies of empowering digital transformation while pursuing carbon neutrality.
Attendance at the CIIE, which is the second time for AMD, helps the company "cooperate with the local IT industry and make contributions to China's digital economy and sustainable development," according to Spencer Pan, AMD senior vice president and president of China.
The AMD China boss called the upgraded strategy a move "from consumer to commercial," believing that opportunities, including data centers, will become one of the company's "strategic pillars" in the next five years. This will also offset the negative effects of the decline in personal computer sales.
Even with challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic and decreased sales of PCs and cellphones, worldwide semiconductor revenue is expected to grow 13.6 percent to US$676 billion in 2022, according to a report released by researcher Gartner in early 2022.
AMD finished its acquisition of Xilinx early this year in an all-stock transaction valued at nearly US$50 billion, the biggest deal in the industry in recent years. Xilinx is the market leader in Field Programmable Gate Array or FPGA.
After the acquisitions of Xilinx and another firm Pensando, AMD now offers the chip industry's broadest portfolio covering CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, Adaptive SoCs and deep software expertise.
At its CIIE booth, AMD is also showcasing its third-generation EPYC processors and latest Instinct accelerators, a new slogan "together we advance", and a green target to increase energy efficiency by 30 times by 2025. While providing powerful computing power, the third-generation AMD EPYC processors can help reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) and boost energy efficiency. The fourth-generation AMD EPYC processors, powered by 5-nanometer "Zen 4" CPU core, will be launched very soon, the company said.
Its processors are used by dot-coms Alibaba and Tencent, as well as Lenovo's workstation products, a visit to the booth revealed.