AMD is becoming an AI chip company, just like Nvidia

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses AMD's recent earnings announcement, highlighting the significant growth of its data center business, which now accounts for nearly half of the company's sales. The key points are:

• AMD's data center business has doubled in a single year, primarily driven by the success of its AMD Instinct MI300 accelerator chip, which competes with Nvidia's H100 AI chip.
• AMD plans to release new AI chips annually, with the MI325X coming in Q4 2024, the MI350 in 2025, and the MI400 in 2026, to stay competitive with Nvidia's offerings.
• Despite supply chain challenges, AMD is still struggling to meet the demand for the MI300 chip, and supply is expected to remain tight through 2025.
• The rise of AMD's data center business has implications for PC gamers, as the company may focus more on AI-related chips rather than new GPUs for gaming in the near future.

🙋 Q&A

[01] AMD's Data Center Business

1. What is the current state of AMD's data center business?

• AMD's data center business now accounts for nearly half of the company's sales.
• The data center business has doubled in a single year, primarily driven by the success of the AMD Instinct MI300 accelerator chip.
• The MI300 chip generated over $1 billion in sales in a single quarter, up from its previous milestone of $1 billion cumulatively since its December 2023 debut.

2. How does AMD's data center business compare to Nvidia's?

• Nvidia has a significant headstart over AMD in the data center market, with its data center business generating $22.6 billion in a quarter, compared to AMD's $2.8 billion.
• However, AMD is working to catch up by releasing new AI chips annually, with the MI325X, MI350, and MI400 planned for the coming years.

3. What are the implications of AMD's focus on data center chips for PC gamers?

• The rise of AMD's data center business may mean that the company focuses more on AI-related chips rather than new GPUs for gaming in the near future.
• However, the article suggests that the "rising tide raises all boats," and that new GPU architectures funded by AI dollars could yield faster improvements for other tasks, including gaming.

[02] AMD's Other Businesses

1. How did AMD's personal computing CPU and GPU businesses perform in the latest quarter?

• AMD's Ryzen CPUs were up 49% year-over-year and slightly up quarter-over-quarter.
• While gaming revenue declined 59% due to flagging PlayStation and Xbox sales, AMD's Radeon 6000 GPUs actually increased sales year-over-year.

2. What is the status of AMD's Zen 5 laptop chips?

• AMD says there are more than 100 different "platforms" on track to ship with its Ryzen AI 300 "Strix Point" chips, though only a few models have been announced so far, such as from Asus, HP, and MSI.