Syed Imran Haider 
This week, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) launched its latest artificial intelligence (AI) processors. It also detailed its plans of developing AI chips in the next two years.
It is part of the company’s plan to take on industry leader Nvidia. Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD, unveiled the MI325X accelerator in Taipei, at the Computex technology trade show.
The said accelerator will become available in the fourth quarter of this year.
The competition
The demand for advanced chips has risen rapidly for developing generative artificial intelligence programs.
AI data centers utilize these chips for supporting these complex programs. The market for AI semiconductors is undoubtedly very lucrative.
Nvidia is currently leading the space with about 80% share of the market, while AMD is trying to compete.
Last year, Nvidia informed its investors that it was planning on reducing its release cycle annually. AMD has done the same now.
Speaking to reporters, Su said that AI had become their top priority and they were harnessing all of the company’s development capability to work on it.
She added that the annual release cycle exists because newer products with newer capabilities are required in the market.
The CEO said that they introduce the next big thing every year to ensure their portfolio remains the most competitive.
The chips
An upcoming series of chips was also introduced by the company that are titled MI350. They will have a new chip architecture and are scheduled for release in 2025.
The series of AI chips currently available is MI300. According to AMD, MI350 will be able to deliver 35 times better performance in inference.
This refers to the process of generating AI responses. The MI400 series was yet another reveal from AMD, which will function on the architecture named ‘Next’.
This series is scheduled for release in 2026. On Sunday, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, talked about Rubin, the company’s next-generation AI chip platform.
He said that it would include CPUs, GPUs and networking chips and would be rolled out in 2026.
Market situation
Investors have already spent billions of dollars in the market. They now want chip companies to introduce longer-term updates for evaluating the longevity of the genAI rally.
So far, the rally in question does not seem to show any signs of slowing down. Since the beginning of 2023, AMD has seen its share value double.
However, in the same period, Nvidia has seen its shares record a seven-fold increase. Market analysts said that it is clear that AMD is planning on going head to head with Nvidia.
Therefore, companies that have been looking for Nvidia alternatives would certainly be pleased with AMD’s announcements.
In April, AMD’s Su had disclosed that they were expecting AI chip sales to reach $4 billion this year. This was $500 million more than their previous estimate.
AMD further revealed at the Computex event that the second half of 2024 will see the rollout of the latest generation of their central processor units.
AMD also shed light on the architecture that will be used for its neural processing units (NPUs). They are designed to handle the AI tasks in PCs.
