AMD wants to win Nvidia’s “AI crown”? Just next week, a "good show" on computing power chips will be staged

June 10 News With the rise of large AI models and the endless emergence of various applications, computing power chips represented by GPUs are in short supply and have long delivery times. Nvidia has also been pushed to the "computing power supremacy" without hesitation. the throne. Its stock price has risen 160% since the beginning of this year, and its market value once exceeded $1 trillion, equivalent to the combined market value of four AMDs or seven Intels.

However, it is obvious that for the long-term development ecology of the industry, it is not favorable for only one company to control the infrastructure of computing chips. Therefore, the market is bound to look forward to AMD, a "minor" player in the GPU market.

Just next week (June 13), AMD will hold an event called "AMD Data Center and Artificial Intelligence Technology Premiere" to showcase its latest data center and artificial intelligence products. Recently, "Forbes" magazine also published a special article for AMD CEO Su Zifeng, saying that she is preparing for the upcoming artificial intelligence competition and wants to win Nvidia's "AI crown."

So, what is the chance of winning for this Silicon Valley leader who was born in Taiwan, China, like Huang Renxun?

Su Zifeng’s glorious record

What are AMD’s chances of winning? To get a glimpse of the answer to this question, perhaps we should go back in time to the CPU era and review the competition between "overlord" Intel and "number two" AMD, or turn our attention to 2014, when AMD was on the verge of collapse. Su Zi Feng has just taken over as CEO.

In the eyes of analysts, AMD in 2014 was a company "not worth investing in". The stock price is only US$2. The company's notebook market share is occupied by Intel, its server market share has shrunk to 2%, and its products cannot even be delivered on time. But on the second day after Su Zifeng took office, she told her employees: "I believe we can create the best products."

Subsequently, AMD formulated three key strategies: creating excellent products, enhancing customer trust, and simplifying company operations. In 2017, AMD's Zen series CPU was released for the first time, which is generally regarded as a turning point for AMD. Su Zifeng said that this is her favorite product.

Stacy Rasgon, a semiconductor analyst at Bernstein Research, said: "They were about six months away from the brink of bankruptcy, but somehow they survived. To this day, they are still selling the products they designed. This new product and named its processor core series "Zen" worked. Their performance was significantly improved, and they successfully curbed the decline in market share and finally reversed the situation."

Between 2017 and 2022, AMD’s U.S. stock price increased sixfold, rising 626.94%; during the same period, Intel’s stock price fell by -2.11%. It is also in 2022 that AMD's market value exceeds Intel's for the first time.

The show is about to begin

Intel is no longer as glorious as it used to be. With the advent of the AI ​​GPU era, Nvidia has almost become the only player in the monopoly market. “AI equals NVIDIA.” Glenn O’Donnell, an analyst at research firm Forrester, said, “NVIDIA’s position has been very consolidated, and AMD must really improve its capabilities to overcome this challenge.”

AMD has not concealed its ambition to surpass Nvidia. Su Zifeng said at the first quarter financial report meeting in 2023 that AMD has listed artificial intelligence as the first strategic focus and is confident in its strength. It is currently actively cooperating with all customers to jointly bring solutions to the market. These include the upcoming Instinct MI300, Ryzen 7040 series processors equipped with AI engines, and a series of data center SoC/HPC accelerators.

In fact, as early as this year's CES show, AMD has "spoiled" its latest flagship acceleration processor Instinct MI300. As mentioned above, AMD will also hold a famous event next week (June 13). event for the "AMD Data Center and Artificial Intelligence Technology Premiere" to showcase its latest data center and artificial intelligence products.

In addition to improving its own research and development capabilities, AMD has also improved its product line through acquisitions. AMD acquired Xilinx for nearly US$50 billion, which mainly operates FPGA, programmable processors and other businesses. Through the acquisition, AMD has achieved a comprehensive layout of CPU, GPU, FPGA.

Currently, AMD’s MI300 is arousing huge interest from all parties in the market. Joseph Moore, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, gave optimistic guidance, saying that AMD has seen "stable orders" from customers, and the company's AI-related revenue in 2024 is expected to reach US$400 million, and may even reach US$1.2 billion - this expectation It is 12 times more than before.

"I think there is still a new stage of AMD, and we have to prove that we are a good company." Su Zifeng said in a recent interview with Forbes, "If you look forward to the next five years, you will see every product of AMD There is a shadow of AI, and it will become the biggest growth driver.”

The "ultimate weapon" that meets all requirements of AI

MI300 is an upcoming AMD product, and its powerful performance may become an "ultimate weapon" to compete with NVIDIA. Su Zifeng said frankly that the Instinct MI300 accelerator can help the company occupy the market, and it meets all the requirements of the AI ​​and HPC/supercomputing ecosystem.

From an architectural point of view, MI300 is AMD’s first product that combines Zen 4 CPU and CNDA 3 GPU, and is also the first “CPU GPU memory” integrated product on the market.

MI300 uses 3D stacking technology and Chiplet design, equipped with 9 chipsets based on the 5nm process, placed on 4 chipsets based on the 6nm process. Its number of transistors reaches 146 billion, which is more than the 80 billion of Nvidia H100 .

According to calculations by Huatai Securities, the computing power performance of MI300 is close to that of NVIDIA Grace Hopper. Although AMD has not yet announced the comparison of computing power between MI300 and NVIDIA Grace Hopper, compared with the previous generation MI250X, MI300's AI computing power (TFLOPS) is expected to be increased by 8 times, and its energy consumption performance (TFLOPS/watt) will be Optimized 5 times. Therefore, the performance improvement of MI300 is expected to approach the level of Grace Hopper.

Currently, AMD has not announced the pricing of MI300, but management stated at the first quarter 2023 financial report that data center products will continue the previous cost-effective pricing style, focusing on opening up the market first. It is predicted that MI300's revenue will begin to increase significantly in the fourth quarter of 2023 and continue to climb in 2024.

In addition, the Ryzen 7040 series processor is also an important AI-related product. AMD Vice President David McAfee said in a recent interview that AMD has introduced a special inference processing unit (IPU) module in the CPU to specifically handle load tasks related to artificial intelligence. The company is considering integrating AI more deeply into the Ryzen product line, extending AI accelerators into Ryzen processors.

The Ryzen 7040 series is manufactured using the 4nm process and can offer products with up to 8 cores and 16 threads.. The core display adopts AMD's latest RDNA3 architecture, equipped with up to 12 CUs (768 stream processors), and integrates an AI acceleration engine based on the XDNA architecture after the acquisition of Xilinx. The R9 7940HS (the highest-end model of the Ryzen 7040 series) is 34% faster than the Apple M1 Pro in multi-threaded performance and 20% faster than the Apple M2 in AI task processing.

In the hardware competition triggered by AI, Nvidia has taken the lead. AMD is unwilling to show weakness. They hold their "ultimate weapon" in hand and are determined to set off a fierce competition in the field of computing chips. Let us look forward to whether Intel, a company that was once in danger, can turn things around in the face of adversity and seize Nvidia's "AI crown."

[Source: Financial Associated Press]

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