Advancing Environmental Sustainability at AMD

By: Justin Murrill, Director, Corporate Responsibility at AMD

According to the World Economic Forum’s 2022 Global Risks Report, “climate action failure” is the number one long-term threat to the world, and it is the risk that has potentially the most severe impacts over the next decade.¹ This is not only a future challenge – the related issues are already manifesting. Globally, the years 2013-2021 all rank among the ten warmest years on record.² Temperatures are increasing due to human activities, specifically emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), according to experts. The International Panel on Climate Change has stated that an average temperature increase of 1.5°C is the threshold for dangerous global warming. Beyond this, they foresee a risk of severely destabilizing social and economic structures around the world, which would have a disproportionately negative impact on vulnerable communities.³

An immediate and meaningful global response is required to address the climate crisis. The technology sector plays a critical role in maximizing product energy efficiency and enabling opportunities to reduce GHG emissions across sectors of society. Accelerating the transition to a sustainable low-carbon economy will produce benefits for economic growth, promote the health of people and our environment, and increase resilience to natural disasters.⁴

Our Approach

AMD combines performance and possibility so that together we advance to a better world. As leaders in the semiconductor industry during a period of amazing growth, we embrace the responsibility to protect our planet and the opportunity to help others save energy and reduce GHG emissions. Our environmental programs and initiatives extend across our value chain, and we set ambitious goals and publicly report annually on our progress.

At AMD, our approach to environmental sustainability is based on three pillars:

• MINIMIZING environmental impacts at AMD and in our supply chain;
• ADVANCING environmental performance for IT users; and
• INNOVATING on collaborative solutions to address environmental challenges

Within AMD operations, we aim to minimize energy use and resource consumption while aggressively reducing GHG emissions (aligned with a 1.5°C scenario). We also work closely with our manufacturing suppliers to advance environmental (as well as health and safety) performance metrics. These efforts to mitigate the impacts associated with making and operating AMD technology, as well as optimizing system-level energy efficiency, help our customers and end-users advance their own sustainability goals. For example, using fewer servers to meet data center compute performance needs and upgrading older notebook and desktop computers with more energy-efficient models can reduce electricity use and GHG emissions. Collectively, our innovations and collaborations across the value chain help advance efficient high-performance computing behind innovative solutions like those for optimized renewable energy generation, enhanced automation (smart cities and factories), and cutting-edge climate and scientific research.

We also engage with industry peers, government regulators, civil society organizations and other groups to advance environmental sustainability across our value chain. The collective efforts and innovations stemming from the technology sector exceed what any of us could do as individual organizations.

Goals and Progress

As we continue to grow and expand our business, we look ahead with ambition and purpose. We recognize that our environmental sustainability efforts must continue to go beyond slowing growth in GHG emissions. In fact, we have the opportunity to enable reductions in energy use and GHG emissions across industries. As such, AMD is charting a bold path to advance energy efficiency for accelerated computing applications; setting a science-based GHG emissions reduction goal for our operations (aligned with a 1.5˚C scenario); and working with suppliers to increase efficient use of resources and renewable energy.

Our goals include:

1. 50 percent reduction in absolute GHG emissions from AMD operations by 2030 (base year 2020).

• ON TRACK: In 2021, we achieved a 25 percent reduction in our scope 1 and 2 emissions compared to 2020.

2. 30x increase in energy efficiency for AMD processors and accelerators powering servers for artificial intelligence training and high-performance computing from 2020-2025.⁵

• ON TRACK: In 2021, AMD achieved a 3.9x increase, and midway through 2022 reached a 6.8x improvement in energy efficiency compared to 2020.⁶

3. 100 percent of AMD manufacturing suppliers⁷ have public emissions reduction goals by 2025.

• ON TRACK: In 2021, 74 percent of our manufacturing suppliers have public GHG goals.

4. 80 percent of AMD manufacturing suppliers⁷ source renewable energy by 2025.

• ON TRACK: In 2021, 74 percent of our manufacturing suppliers sourced renewable energy.

For more information on environmental sustainability programs and initiatives at AMD, please visit our website.

Footnotes

1. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_Global_Risks_Report_2022.pdf. Climate Action Failure is defined by WEF as the “Failure of governments and businesses to enforce, enact or invest in effective climate-change adaptation and mitigation measures, preserve ecosystems, protect populations and transition to a carbon-neutral economy”.
2. https://www.noaa.gov/news/2021-was-worlds-6th-warmest-year-on-record
3. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/
4. https://www.itic.org/policy/environment-sustainability
5. Includes AMD high-performance CPU and GPU accelerators used for AI training and High-Performance Computing in a 4P-hosted configuration. Goal calculations based on performance scores as measured by standard performance metrics (HPC: Linpack DGEMM kernel FLOPS with 4k matrix size. AI training: lower precision floating point math GEMM kernels such as FP16 or BF16 FLOPS operating on 4k matrices) divided by the rated power consumption of a representative accelerated compute node including the CPU host + memory and 4 GPU accelerators.
6. EPYC-030: Calculation includes 1) base case kWhr use projections in 2025 conducted with Koomey Analytics based on available research and data that includes segment-specific projected 2025 deployment volumes and data center power utilization effectiveness (PUE) including GPU HPC and machine learning (ML) installations, and 2) AMD CPU socket and GPU node power consumptions incorporating segment-specific utilization (active vs. idle) percentages and multiplied by PUE to determine actual total energy use for calculation of the performance per Watt. 6.79x = (base case HPC node kWhr use projection in 2025 x AMD 2022 perf/Watt improvement using DGEMM and typical energy consumption + Base case ML node kWhr use projection in 2025 *AMD 2022 perf/Watt improvement using ML math and typical energy consumption) /(2020 perf/Watt * Base case projected kWhr usage in 2025). For more information on the goal and methodology, visit https://www.amd. com/en/corporate-responsibility/data-center-sustainability.
7. AMD Manufacturing Suppliers are suppliers that AMD buys from directly and that provide direct materials and/or manufacturing services.