AMD’s New AI Chips

AMD unveiled its latest AI chips, including the Instinct MI325X accelerator and 5th Gen EPYC processors, at its Advancing AI 2024 event, aiming to challenge Nvidia’s dominance in the lucrative data center GPU market and compete with Intel in server CPUs. According to reports from Yahoo Finance and PYMNTS, while AMD’s new offerings show improved performance, analysts suggest they still lag behind Nvidia’s upcoming Blackwell chips by about a year.

AI Advancements Unveiled

At the Advancing AI 2024 event in San Francisco, a range of new AI-focused products were introduced, including the Instinct MI325X accelerator and 5th Gen EPYC processors. The MI325X is set to begin production by the end of 2024, with availability for partners in Q1 2025. This new chip boasts 1.8 times the memory capacity and 1.3 times the bandwidth of Nvidia’s H200 GPU. However, despite these improvements, industry analysts suggest that AMD’s offerings still lag behind Nvidia’s upcoming Blackwell chips by approximately a year. The event also showcased AMD’s partnerships with major tech companies like Meta, Google, Oracle, and Microsoft, highlighting the growing adoption of AMD’s AI solutions in enterprise applications.

Product Updates and Features

The Instinct MI325X accelerator, AMD’s latest AI chip, boasts impressive specifications, offering 1.8 times the memory capacity and 1.3 times the bandwidth of Nvidia’s H200 GPU. Set to begin production by the end of 2024, with availability for partners in Q1 2025, this new chip represents a significant step forward in AMD’s AI hardware offerings. Additionally, AMD introduced its 5th Gen EPYC processors, designed to compete with Intel in the server CPU market. These processors range from an economical 8-core model priced at $527 to high-end 192-core 500-watt processors for supercomputers, costing $14,813 each.

Innovative Projects Launched

AMD’s Advancing AI 2024 event also introduced the Ryzen AI PRO 300 series processors for enterprise AI PCs, featuring the new “Zen 5” architecture. The top-of-the-line Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 375 offers up to 40% higher performance and 14% faster productivity compared to Intel’s Core Ultra 7 165U. These processors deliver industry-leading AI compute capabilities, with up to three times the AI performance of the previous generation. The series includes models with up to 12 cores/24 threads, boost frequencies up to 5.1GHz, and integrated Radeon graphics, catering to the growing demand for AI-enabled business PCs.

Future Vision and Goals

Looking ahead, AMD envisions the data center AI accelerator market growing to $500 billion by 2028, signaling significant opportunities for expansion. To capitalize on this potential, the company has outlined an ambitious roadmap for its AI accelerators, with plans to launch the next-generation AMD Instinct MI350 series in the second half of 2025, followed by the AMD Instinct MI400 Series based on the AMD CDNA Next architecture in 2026. These future releases aim to extend AMD’s leadership in memory capacity and generative AI performance, demonstrating the company’s commitment to innovation and its goal of narrowing the gap with competitors in the rapidly evolving AI chip market.

Source: Perplexity