The Time is Now for AI Infused Silicon Innovation
It’s not every day that one gets to witness the world’s leading silicon innovators capturing the zeitgeist of industry development, but today’s MWC session, Chips for the Future: Fueling Business Transformation with Computing Power, delivered just that opportunity. I’d spent the days before MWC chatting with Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman and Arm CMO Ami Badani about their companies’ leadership in breakout innovation to fuel AI adoption.
What I learned from those sessions set the stage for my moderation today, highlighted by a fireside chat with AMD’s SVP and GM of Adaptive and Embedded Computing, Salil Raje. You wouldn’t know it from his understated demeanor, but Salil oversees a massive business at AMD, driving the strategy and portfolio delivery for edge computing in its various forms. Salil spoke passionately about 2025 as a time for broad edge AI adoption. He highlighted customer traction in spaces including automotive, industrial, healthcare, and communications networks.
Imagine exoskeleton technology that grants people with disabilities the power to walk again. Imagine healing sick fish for sustainable fish farming. Imagine delivering foundational technology to target zero auto fatalities by 2030. These are some of the customer applications that AMD’s heterogeneous computing platforms help deliver, and as Salil spoke about how AMD was working across the value chain to enable AI infusion into industry after industry, I was left with an impression of bold technology leadership and open collaboration.
Salil also threw a gauntlet to the audience about 2025, stating that the standards-based innovation that has been the hallmark of the communications industry is out of step with the speed of AI advancement. While some target 6G transition as the moment for AI integration into communications networks, he challenged his peers to move more swiftly, stating that now was the time to advance with 5G.
While AMD showed its newfound weight in the edge, Ampere, Ansys and Rebellions also took the opportunity to battle out broader trends driving enterprise AI adoption. Sunghyun Park, CEO of Rebellions, made an insightful observation, stating that AI training is very akin to R&D investments, but it’s in AI inference that monetization of AI will occur. And it’s in this space that his company, the leading AI accelerator firm in APAC, is targeting its technology. Not to be outdone, Jeff Wittich, CPO at Ampere, observed that all of this AI inference adoption will be hindered without tackling some of the fundamental efficiency challenges in much of AI infrastructure today. He pointed to Ampere’s portfolio as part of that fundamental solution, based on its superior energy efficiency offered by Arm cores and a design that has placed efficiency and performance on equal footing in design priority. Jayraj Nair, Field CTO of High Tech at Ansys, added that it’s the industry collaboration, founded in Ansys simulation that starts at the chip, that will ultimately fuel technology advancement from data center to edge.
Intel was also on hand, with Sachin Katti, SVP and GM of the Network and Edge Group, detailing the advancement of Xeon 6 SoC designs that just hit the market. And it’s within this presentation that we got a broader view of the challenge and complexity of all silicon innovation in this era. We’ve moved to a chiplet-driven, performance and efficiency intensive environment for silicon requirements, and all companies onstage, and those that joined me before the show, have never faced the engineering challenges that we’re witnessing today to keep up with the torrent-like pace of AI requirements. The demand is vast for semiconductors to fuel every nook of AI’s advancement, and while each player would love to capture the lion’s share of deployments (and arguably AMD has the portfolio to do just that), we all benefit from the competition and collaboration demonstrated on the MWC stage today. As a certified chiphead, I’m happy to see engineering delivery this inspired.
It’s not every day that one gets to witness the world’s leading silicon innovators capturing the zeitgeist of industry development, but today’s MWC session, Chips for the Future: Fueling Business Transformation with Computing Power, delivered just that opportunity. I’d spent the days before MWC chatting with Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman and Arm CMO Ami Badani about their companies’ leadership in breakout innovation to fuel AI adoption.
What I learned from those sessions set the stage for my moderation today, highlighted by a fireside chat with AMD’s SVP and GM of Adaptive and Embedded Computing, Salil Raje. You wouldn’t know it from his understated demeanor, but Salil oversees a massive business at AMD, driving the strategy and portfolio delivery for edge computing in its various forms. Salil spoke passionately about 2025 as a time for broad edge AI adoption. He highlighted customer traction in spaces including automotive, industrial, healthcare, and communications networks.
Imagine exoskeleton technology that grants people with disabilities the power to walk again. Imagine healing sick fish for sustainable fish farming. Imagine delivering foundational technology to target zero auto fatalities by 2030. These are some of the customer applications that AMD’s heterogeneous computing platforms help deliver, and as Salil spoke about how AMD was working across the value chain to enable AI infusion into industry after industry, I was left with an impression of bold technology leadership and open collaboration.
Salil also threw a gauntlet to the audience about 2025, stating that the standards-based innovation that has been the hallmark of the communications industry is out of step with the speed of AI advancement. While some target 6G transition as the moment for AI integration into communications networks, he challenged his peers to move more swiftly, stating that now was the time to advance with 5G.
While AMD showed its newfound weight in the edge, Ampere, Ansys and Rebellions also took the opportunity to battle out broader trends driving enterprise AI adoption. Sunghyun Park, CEO of Rebellions, made an insightful observation, stating that AI training is very akin to R&D investments, but it’s in AI inference that monetization of AI will occur. And it’s in this space that his company, the leading AI accelerator firm in APAC, is targeting its technology. Not to be outdone, Jeff Wittich, CPO at Ampere, observed that all of this AI inference adoption will be hindered without tackling some of the fundamental efficiency challenges in much of AI infrastructure today. He pointed to Ampere’s portfolio as part of that fundamental solution, based on its superior energy efficiency offered by Arm cores and a design that has placed efficiency and performance on equal footing in design priority. Jayraj Nair, Field CTO of High Tech at Ansys, added that it’s the industry collaboration, founded in Ansys simulation that starts at the chip, that will ultimately fuel technology advancement from data center to edge.
Intel was also on hand, with Sachin Katti, SVP and GM of the Network and Edge Group, detailing the advancement of Xeon 6 SoC designs that just hit the market. And it’s within this presentation that we got a broader view of the challenge and complexity of all silicon innovation in this era. We’ve moved to a chiplet-driven, performance and efficiency intensive environment for silicon requirements, and all companies onstage, and those that joined me before the show, have never faced the engineering challenges that we’re witnessing today to keep up with the torrent-like pace of AI requirements. The demand is vast for semiconductors to fuel every nook of AI’s advancement, and while each player would love to capture the lion’s share of deployments (and arguably AMD has the portfolio to do just that), we all benefit from the competition and collaboration demonstrated on the MWC stage today. As a certified chiphead, I’m happy to see engineering delivery this inspired.
