AMD’s New AI Chip Instinct MI325X Targets Nvidia’s Dominance in Data Centers

AMD has officially launched its latest AI chip, the Instinct MI325X, at Computex 2024 in Taipei.

Designed to rival Nvidia’s dominant data centre GPUs, the MI325X is built on AMD’s advanced CDNA 3 architecture and offers an impressive 256 GB of HBM3E memory with 6 TB/s bandwidth.

Targeting AI workloads like model training, this chip boasts 40% higher inference performance compared to Nvidia’s H200. With its sights set on the growing AI accelerator market, AMD aims to challenge Nvidia’s market share while optimizing performance for cutting-edge AI applications.

What’s New:

This new chip MI325X is designed to directly compete with Nvidia’s data centre graphics processors and will particularly target the upcoming Blackwell chips. 

Key Insight:

With MI325X, AMD is aiming to capture share in the rapidly growing AI accelerator chip market and the production of the MI325X will begin by the end of 2024 and availability can be expected in early 2024.   

AMD (AMD) Chief Executive Lisa Su expects the AI accelerator chip market to reach more than $500 billion by 2028 which is a 25% jump from her forecast last year of $400 billion.

Nvidia currently dominates the chip market with around 90% share.

How This Works:

The MI325X is built on AMD’s CDNA 3 architecture and it features 256 GB of HBM3E memory with a bandwidth of 6 TB/s. This setup provides significantly higher performance compared to Nvidia’s H200 chip, offering up to 40% greater inference performance when running advanced AI models like Meta’s Llama AI. The MI325X is optimised for various AI tasks, including model training and fine-tuning.

Results:

AMD’s stock fell by 3% following the announcement contrasting sharply with Nvidia’s impressive 175% stock increase this year. Despite this setback, AMD is optimistic about its new chip and believes that the MI325X will attract interest from investors and developers who are looking for competitive alternatives to Nvidia’s offerings.

Why This Matters:

The introduction of the MI325X could disrupt Nvidia’s pricing strategy as with more players in the market there will be more competition. By providing a viable alternative, AMD is hoping to lower costs for consumers and businesses while increasing its market presence in the AI sector.

We’re Thinking:

Nvidia has established its market due to its CUDA programming language and AMD is facing a lot of challenges in gaining market share, this was visible when its share price fell after the unveiling of MI325X, to tackle this challenge AMD is enhancing its ROCm software platform to facilitate easier transitions for developers moving from Nvidia’s ecosystem. The success of the MI325X will depend on its acceptance among major cloud service providers and tech companies already using Nvidia products.
AMD’s strategic launch of the MI325X has positioned it as a serious contender in the AI chip market and this will surely reshape the competition dynamics in the chip industry which is going to help both consumers and businesses.