In The Arena by TechArena - AMD Extends Network Performance and Efficiency Leadership at MWC24

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

TechArena host Allyson Klein chats with AMD’s Kumaran Siva about his company’s gaining momentum in telco network and edge deployments fueled by EPYC processors and the Siena products uniquely designed for these environments.

Welcome to the Tech Arena, featuring authentic discussions between tech's leading innovators and our host, Alison Klein. Now, let's step into the arena. Welcome to the Tech Arena. My name is Alison Klein, and today I am delighted to have Kumaran Siva, Corporate Vice President of Strategic Business Development at AMD with us. Welcome to the show, Kumaran. How are you? Hey, thank you for having me. So Kumaran, that's a big title, but why don't you just describe a little bit about what you do at AMD and how it relates to the topic today? Yeah, so I'm responsible. I work first off in the server business unit. I'm responsible for essentially understanding how EPYC CPUs get adopted into different verticals, in particular telecommunications, but also like financial services, manufacturing and all these other, you know, seven other verticals that we cover. Also look at the ecosystem and make sure that the right ISVs, the right type of solutions are put together so that it becomes easy for customers to adopt.

And then we also focus on working with some of the largest customers in each vertical, right? So in the case of telecommunications, we talk directly a lot with the end carriers to make sure that they're able to understand our value and also understand how we're addressing their particular needs. You know, we're coming up against Mobile World Congress, which is one of my favorite shows of the year because it really shows what the industry is doing to deliver on the promise of 5G. And I guess my next question for you is, with that ongoing rollout of 5G, how do you envision the technology playing a crucial role in meeting the demands of next generation networks? Yeah, that's a great question. First off, AMD is just probably the best server CPU out there today.

I can assume mainstream CPU in terms of fantastic compatibility with x86. AMD really created the modern 64-bit x86 instruction set. So the compatibility is just there. And then the density and the performance is just unmatched in the industry today. From a 5G standpoint, we think of things like Packet Core, NFV, those workloads that are both throughput demanding, and then sometimes, you know, single thread, single core demanding, they run extremely well on our CPUs. Part of, I think, what AMD is bringing to the table is helping realize some of the vision of having commodity servers in a rollout. And 5G is just the catalyst to really start accelerating with our adoption and also, frankly, the movement towards this bigger vision for the industry.

You mentioned that you work with comm service providers and the carriers on, you know, what they require. Could you share some insights from those conversations on how AMD is addressing the unique challenges that they're faced in terms of performance, scalability, even energy efficiency? Yeah, that's a great question. I think in the last few years, things have changed somewhat for the communication service providers. The one key one is energy efficiency has become just a huge, huge issue. We've heard of CSDs that have had their power jump by 15x. That's not a very extreme, but the ongoing challenges in Europe, the access to energy being disrupted,

that's caused considerable fluctuation. And so energy efficiency has really become top of mind for a lot of carriers. But, you know, and I think the AMD architecture is really well suited. And so I think that in some respects, we want the best for our customers, but they're very motivated to come talk to us because our technology is able to give them the disruptive energy efficiency and sort of the best in class for that kind of those kinds of workloads that are needed.

So I think that that is kind of interesting. I think the other piece of it that has, I think, been promised for a long time and it's finally starting to, you know, kind of roll out in a very slow way is virtualized RAN. And there we have a great solution in the form of our Ciena chip. And it's kind of interesting. We've been very focused on just getting the best possible CPU that can play in edge applications, including VRAM, right? I mean, I think VRAM is the broader set of edge applications.

And it's actually getting a remarkable amount of attention. And it's in trials and being worked on by a number of the major ISPs just because of the amazing energy efficiency it gives you. At the same time, going up to 64 cores, that gives an enormous amount of scalability to customers in terms of kind of workloads that they both know about and or that they don't know, right? So they have some spare capacity there. You know, understanding that these boxes are in the field for, you know, five, 10 years, right? And so it's important that that headroom be there. When you look at that challenge of, you know, the increased energy efficiency, the demand for new types of services, the operators are going through a lot right now. Platform choice is so important. Do you see operators taking full advantage of 5G? And if not, what are the use

cases that you think will be discussed at Mobile World Congress that are going to be exciting this year that, you know, we think are the next trends in this space? That's a really good question. I mean, I think when 5G was first touted, there were a lot of use cases out there. In particular, I mean, with TELP communications and dealing with the pipe, you really only have two kind of levers, right? One is latency and the other one's bandwidth, right?

And 5G had the promise of both, like really low latency and high bandwidth. I'd say it's actually succeeded in the bandwidth side of things. And it's not unusual to see people streaming, I don't know, like a Netflix video coming off a plane. You know, like the connectivity is good. The bandwidth is great.

Like as the networks roll out, you get a lot of that goodness. I think fundamentally the thing that may be still out there is really what can you do with latency, right? Like if you can cut the latency down, what kind of applications are truly out there and what is there to be had? The thing that probably excites me the most is this augmented AI where you have some part of it running in the client. And there's going to be physics at some point, right? That says you can't do a 70 billion parameter language model on your little IoT device, right? So there's some connectivity that's needed.

And then the latency there then starts to matter. And then the latency, the proximity of compute. That's another thing that I think, I actually feel like edge has been talked about for a long time as well. Edge is coming of compute. That's another thing that I think, I actually feel like edge has been talked about for a long time as well. Edge is coming of age. I really see it, right? I think the art of what's possible

of like sort of walking into a store, picking up something and walking out and having it recognize your face and bill your credit card and figure out what item it was. Like that's starting, it's going from science fiction to reality, right? You can suffer, I guess, the Amazon Go concept. But I think that's going to be the way of the future for a lot of things. And it's hard to anticipate. But there, the value

proposition that 5G had of super high bandwidth and latency really comes into its own because you can start to see how that kind of idea will start to scale. So that's going to be pretty exciting. You know, it's funny. I was wondering if AI was going to come up. And I guess what you're saying, Kumaran, is that I'm never going to train the next large language model on my iPhone. But, you know, it's funny what you say about edge because we have been talking about it for a long time, but I feel like we're hitting up against the killer apps that are going to propel the edge forward. When you think about edge and you think about what needs to be built for the network in particular, how does the infrastructure change from what AMD and the industry is delivering in data centers? And what do you have to be thinking about for those varied locations?

Obviously, the easy answer is you're going to need a lot more compute, right? But the real question is, what form is that compute going to take? How power efficient? It is a multidimensional problem when you think about what the carriers have to deal with, because they want to put something in the ground that lasts a few years, because the truck rolls really do cost them, right? That is probably the most significant piece of their COGS, right, is to get people out there to service things and upgrade things. So you need something that can sit in the ground for a while, but can be flexible and can kind of grow to users' demands.

So that's a hard thing to do, right? And I think that's where the challenges are going to come in. I do think at some point the CPUs, they're able to do AI well, as AMD ones are, definitely have a value in those edge type deployments that augment what's out there in the ground or in the IoT field. And I'm thinking more than just like, you know, mobile phones. I think mobile phones actually are probably on a reasonable trajectory. I think about all the other devices that folks, you know, like, I mean, yeah, there are a lot of IoT devices. Like you can seem to get connected to anything these days.

Like you've got a new dishwasher and it sends a notification once it's done. And not that that's terribly useful, to be honest with you, but you can see how things are going to get smarter and smarter and more pervasive. I don't know if that really answered your question. No, I think you did. I think you did. And I think that, you know, when you're talking, one of the things that I was thinking about is the importance of working together to deliver this. And I was recently talking to a tower company that's working on 5G implementation over national borders and the complexity of those types of solutions. And it makes me think that the CPU provider has such a foundational role to play in ecosystem collaboration. How do you approach that at AMD? And how do you see the industry working together on these compelling

solutions across core-to-edge networks? So one thing with AMD, just the bigger picture for us, you know, we re-entered the server business, what, give or take five years ago, six years ago now. And we built a good business. It's now up to over 30%, I think, with the latest Mercury, 31% market share of all server CPUs. That's across the board. We've done that through building partnerships. I mean, that has been the core kind of AMD's DNA, right? More than I'd say any other company that I personally work for.

And I think that is the essence of how we have to approach some of these problems that are coming out, right? So we don't have all the answers AI and 5G, you know, all of these, 6G, all these areas are going to require, you know, enormous working with folks and having us be a component and be an important essential ingredient, but not the only ingredient, right? So it is about how we enable and live within a vibrant ecosystem, right? And that, and also, frankly, the customers have choice. Right. That is that is really vital to to actually engage the ecosystem at MWC. What are you most excited about for this year's show? What do you think you're going to be hearing from the carriers?

What do you think you're going to be hearing from different providers? From a math point of view, we're particularly excited about the progress that the MDCPs, frankly, have made in that area. So that's one thing that I'm super looking forward to. The broader picture, I'd love to understand the intersection of AI with the telcos. So there has been the large language models, as they apply to how a telco operator can, beyond something like call center, how do you actually automate some of the workflows that they have to deal with and that they're thinking about? And also, how does it work within these intelligent controllers,

I guess, the RIC concept? So understanding how that thinking is now starting to evolve. In my role, I see lots of industries, right? Telco is one of the few different segments that I look at. So I've been trying to understand how AI hasn't now become a bit of a hot topic with every industry, how it actually manifests itself into the working business. And so for Telco, it'd be interesting to understand

how can they use various bots of sorts to accelerate different processes in their business. I mean, their business is extremely complicated when you think about it. You're talking about towers. How do you find a tower? How do you negotiate a rental lease? How do you plan that cellular network?

It's actually an extremely complicated business to be in. With a combination of technical challenges and business challenges, that'd be really interesting to understand that intersection and what they're doing, even beyond just the base station and the actual data flow. But the actual running of their businesses would be quite fascinating to understand as well. I think you hit a bunch of hot buttons for me too, and I'm really looking forward to the conference. I'm looking forward to visiting AMD's booth at Mobile World Congress and checking out what you're showing as well. Kumran, one final question for you. We talked about Epic. We talked about your partnerships. We talked a lot about a lot of technology today. Where can folks find out more about what you're doing in the communications arena and learn more about potential trials of processors and solutions? Yeah, sure. I mean, if they are at Mobile World Commerce, we do have a

pretty nice booth. We'll have a bunch of really interesting demos out there, you know, showcasing PacketCore, best-in-class PacketCore performance with some of the industry leaders, as well as a VRAM solution. So it'll be a very, MWC will be a great place to connect. Obviously, our website is a good place to go check us out. We do have material on telecommunications and the benchmarks and some of the products in particular for the Ciena CPU. We've done quite a bit of work on kind of showing,

showcasing some of these edge use cases that we've just talked about. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. Great. Thank you. Thanks for joining the Tech Arena. Subscribe and engage at our website, thetecharena.net. All content is copyright by The Tech Arena.