Launching new AI chips, AMD challenges industry leader Nvidia
June 3, Taipei (Reuters) - In an effort to take on market leader Nvidia (NVDA.O), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), opens new tab, presented its newest AI processors on Monday and outlined its ambition to create AI chips over the next two years.
The MI325X accelerator was unveiled by AMD CEO Lisa Su at the Computex technology trade expo in Taipei. It is scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of 2024.
The drive to create generative AI applications has resulted in an enormous demand for the cutting-edge CPUs needed in AI data centers that can handle these intricate applications.
AMD has been fighting to challenge Nvidia, which now holds a commanding 80% market share in the lucrative AI chip sector.
AMD has now followed suit, with Nvidia having made it apparent to investors since last year that it intends to reduce its release cycle to once a year.
"AI is clearly our number one priority as a company and we have really harnessed all of the development capability within the company to do that," Su told the media.
The reason behind this yearly cycle is that the market demands newer products with newer features. We always have the most competitive portfolio because we have the next big item every year."
AMD also unveiled the MI350 chip series, which will be built on a revolutionary chip architecture and should go on sale in 2025.
AMD stated that it anticipates the MI350 to perform 35 times better in
inference—the process of calculating generative AI responses—than the MI300
family of AI chips already on the market.
AMD also unveiled the MI400 series, which will debut in 2026 and is built on
the "Next" architecture.
CEO of Nvidia Jensen Huang had stated on Sunday that GPUs, CPUs, and networking chips would be part of the company's next-generation AI chip platform, dubbed Rubin, which is scheduled for release in 2026.
Investors have been pouring billions of dollars into Wall Street's picks-and-shovels trade, and they have been looking to chip companies for longer-term updates in order to assess how long the soaring genAI rally will last—so far, no signs of a slowdown.
On Monday, Nvidia's shares increased by more than 3%, while AMD's were unchanged. Although AMD's worth has more than doubled since the beginning of 2023, the increase is nothing compared to the more than seven-fold increase in Nvidia's share price during the same time frame.
Chief analyst Bob O'Donnell of Technalysis Research stated, "While the proof will be in the pudding, there's no doubt that AMD is taking Nvidia head-on and companies looking for alternatives to Nvidia are bound to be happy to hear what AMD had to say."
In April, AMD's Su stated that the company anticipates $4 billion in sales of AI chips by 2024, a $500 million increase over its previous projection.
AMD stated at Computex that the second half of 2024 will probably see the release of its most recent generation of central processor units.
Although AI chips are usually the top priority for enterprises when it comes to data centers, AMD's CPUs are sometimes employed in conjunction with graphics processing units (GPUs), albeit the ratio is skewed in favor of GPUs.
The new neural processing units (NPUs) from AMD, which are intended to handle on-device AI tasks in AI PCs, have been described in full.
Chipmakers have been counting on increased AI capabilities to propel PC market expansion as it bounces back from a protracted downturn.
Manufacturers of PCs, including HP
(HPQ.N) and Lenovo (0992.HK), will be releasing devices using AMD's AI PC CPUs.
AMD claims that their processors outperform Microsoft's (MSFT.O), opens new tab
Copilot+ PC specifications.