Investment from AMD in Ireland
AMD said that up to $135 million will be used to fund a number of strategic research and development initiatives, including the recruitment of 290 highly skilled employees in R&D and engineering, and a variety of support personnel. AMD’s statement on its strategic R&D initiatives in Ireland is rather vague as the company talks about next-generation artificial intelligence, data center, networking and 6G communications infrastructure. This essentially means the majority of markets served by Xilinx’s adaptive computing solutions like FPGAs. On the other hand, it is likely that the main focus will be on artificial intelligence in general.
Meanwhile, AMD states that a number of Xilinx products are being developed in Europe, such as the AMD Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC products. AMD reports that it will continue to support the European semiconductor ecosystem by strengthening its presence in Ireland. The AMD Xilinx facility in Ireland was originally established in 1994, making it the company’s first dedicated facility outside the US. The facility is focused on manufacturing, engineering, operational assistance and management. Following AMD’s acquisition of Xilinx in 2022, the Irish campus has grown into one of the company’s largest research and development centers in Europe.