European expansion to help boost hardware and software innovation.
Earlier this month, high-performance processor and graphics company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced the opening of a new Design Center in the city of Iaşi in northeastern Romania. The location is part of AMD’s development strategy in Europe grounded in investing in workforce development in the region.
“AMD is committed to providing customers high-performance products with advanced security features that help solve some of the world’s toughest challenges,” said Mario Silveira, corporate vice president of sales EMEA at AMD. “I am excited to see Europe contributing to our company’s vision of delivering sustainable and industry-leading products through a team of talented engineers in Romania.”
AMD plans to expand engineering resources in the European Union, focusing on silicon design. The design center in Iaşi will employ a diverse team of engineers tasked with furthering hardware and software innovation integral to AMD’s computing solutions technologies. The new center also signals continued plans for expansion to capture an appetite for tech growth in the region.
In 2006, AMD opened an office in Romania’s capital Bucharest to direct operations in Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, aiming to establish a permanent presence in Romania. At the time, the Eastern European market was “growing fast,” with AMD’s market share at 28.9 percent. According to Invest Romania, Romania’s tech sector is booming and considered the primary growth driver for the country, with activity reportedly concentrated in the cities of Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Iaşi, Timişoara and Braşov. With annual investment growth of €20 million ($23.3 million), the sector is dominated by companies with foreign capital such as Oracle, Amazon and IBM.
Romania has also been described as one of the world’s next tech hotspots.
“The AI start-up scene in Romania is young and small, but it’s expanding rapidly,” said Constantin Pelehra, senior project manager at Horvath & Partners in Bucharest. “The first local venture capital funds were established just three years ago, but tech investments reached 60 deals (worth 31 million euros) in 2020, up from 40 deals in 2019. Seed funding doubled year-on-year to 22 million euros in 2020.”
It’s anticipated that AI start-ups in Romania will be valued at 50 million euros by 2025; however, Pelehra called it a conservative estimate given the amount of innovation underway, new companies entering the arena, an increase in venture capital, and the digitization occurring in the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The domestic market is increasingly ripe for AI-based applications,” said Pelehra.
In addition to AMD’s efforts to develop a new generation of processors to replace the Ryzen 5000 series, the company just released its Radeon RX 6600 graphics card designed for high-performance 1080p gamers, with a retailer in Romania issuing one of the earliest listings for the product.
“We are thrilled to expand our presence in Europe with the opening of a new design center in Iaşi,” said Steven Hesley, corporate vice president of Silicon Design Engineering at AMD. “Our team in Romania will focus on key design developments for future CPU core architectures and AMD Infinity Fabric technology that will help accelerate next-generation computing experiences.”
