Our engineers work on "new oil": U.S. company launches development centers in Serbia

Andrej Zdravković, software director at AMD, reveals for RTS what role Serbian engineers play in the creation of a chip based on artificial intelligence and whether chips are the "new oil".

Three months after AMD announced the expansion of its research centers, it launches a development center in Serbia? What are the plans and why you chose Serbia?  

- We have big plans. We are now practically starting the development center of AMD in Serbia at two locations, in Belgrade with 60 engineers and in Niš with 30 engineers, with plans to double it in the near future.

And why Serbia? Well, I graduated from the Belgrade Faculty of Electrical Engineering, so it's very clear to me how good that school is, how much that school enabled me to do something in the world later. And based on that, we have been thinking for a long time about how to do that opening of the center. We had various collaborations with different groups here and ended up having a fantastic team doing real development, fundamental development for AMD.

The company recently introduced a chip based on artificial intelligence. Are there plans for Serbian engineers to work on that project as well?

- It is not an intended plan, but they are working on it already. There involvement is twofold. We as a company have a very, very large program of AI chips for large data centers. Microsoft is one of the companies that uses our chips for Chat GPT. A section of engineers is working on it. Another part of the group works on devices that are related to the PC industry, the new "Neural Processing Unit" is now launched with the help of Microsoft and the new operating system to not only improve the image but to provide access to those models for artificial intelligence.

The eyes of world leaders, both political and technological, are fixed on miniature tiles barely visible to the naked eye. What is the state of the chip market and are they really the "new oil"?

- From the perspective of someone who works in the semiconductor industry, I can definitely say that it is an industry that is leading the way, that has made fantastic progress. From the time I started working, we had the first small microprocessors, to the formidable microprocessor powerhouse, such as the AMD EPYC microprocessor, to graphics cards and now AI cards.

The semiconductor industry drives the entire industry forward, not only the technology industry, allowing all other industries to actually follow that development trend.