Max A. Black and Arshia Bajwa
TAIPEI (Reuters) – Advanced Micro Devices unveiled its latest artificial intelligence processors on Monday and detailed its plan to develop artificial intelligence chips over the next two years to challenge industry leader Nvidia (NASDAQ:).
At the Computex technology show in Taipei, AMD (NASDAQ:) CEO Lisa Su introduced the MI325X accelerator, which will be available in the fourth quarter of 2024.
The race to develop generative AI programs has led to increased demand for advanced chips used in AI data centers that can support these complex applications.
AMD competes with Nvidia, which currently dominates the lucrative artificial intelligence semiconductor market and controls about 80% of its share.
Since last year, Nvidia has signaled to investors that it plans to shorten its release cycle to annual, and now AMD has followed suit.
“AI is obviously our number one priority as a company, and we’ve really leveraged all the development capabilities within the company to do that,” Su told reporters.
“This annual frequency is because the market demands new products and new capabilities… Every year we have something new, so we always have the most competitive portfolio.”
AMD also unveiled an upcoming series of chips called MI350, which is expected to be available in 2025 and will be based on a new chip architecture.
Compared to the currently available MI300 series of AI chips, AMD said it expects the MI350 to perform 35 times better at inference, the process of computing generative AI responses.
In addition, AMD introduced the MI400 series, which will appear in 2026 and will be based on the Next architecture.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Sunday that the company’s next-generation AI chip platform, called Rubin, scheduled to launch in 2026, will include graphics processing units, central processing units and networking chips.
Investors who have poured billions of dollars into Wall Street trading are waiting for long-term updates from chip makers to gauge the longevity of genAI’s booming rally, which has so far shown no signs of slowing.
AMD shares were unchanged, while Nvidia shares rose more than 3% on Monday. AMD’s value has more than doubled since the start of 2023, but that growth pales in comparison to Nvidia’s more than sevenfold rise over the same period.
“While the proof will be in the pudding, there is no doubt that AMD is challenging Nvidia, and companies looking for alternatives to Nvidia will certainly be happy to hear what AMD has to say,” said Technalysis Research chief analyst Bob O’Donnell.
AMD’s Su said in April that the company expects artificial intelligence chip sales to be about $4 billion in 2024, up $500 million from its previous estimate.
At the Computex event, AMD said its latest generation of central processing units will likely be available in the second half of 2024.
While companies typically prioritize spending on AI chips in data centers, some AMD processors are used in combination with GPUs, although the ratio is skewed in favor of GPUs.
Detailed architecture of AMD’s new Neural Processing Units (NPUs) that are designed to run AI tasks on AI-enabled PC devices.
Chipmakers are betting on additional artificial intelligence capabilities to drive growth in the PC market, which is emerging from a multi-year slump.
PC vendors such as HP (NYSE:) and Lenovo will release devices that include AMD’s AI PC processors. AMD said its processors exceed Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:) Copilot+ PC requirements.