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.
Based in Santa Clara, California 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.
Investors looking to assess the endurance of the huge genAI rally—which hasn’t showed any signs of slowing down—have been requesting longer-term updates from semiconductor companies. These investors have thrown billions of dollars into Wall Street’s picks-and-shovels trade.
Since the beginning of 2023, AMD’s stock has more than doubled. This increase is still insignificant when compared to the more than seven-fold increase in Nvidia’s stock price during the same timeframe.
AMD wants to achieve a one-year release cycle for AI chips. Nvidia also declared that it would launch a new line of AI chips each year.
In April, Su from AMD stated that the company anticipates selling $4 billion worth of AI chips by 2024, a $500 million increase over its previous projection.
AMD also stated during the Computex event that the second half of 2024 will probably see the release of its most recent generation of central processing units (CPUs).
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.
