I discuss quite a bit about Nvidia. And for good cause…
Simply final month, the corporate posted a $44 billion quarter — one of many largest within the historical past of U.S. tech corporations.
Nvidia’s information heart enterprise alone made extra money than many Fortune 500 corporations.
The corporate is the market chief in cutting-edge AI know-how. And when Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang speaks, it usually leads to the information.
However this week, certainly one of Nvidia’s greatest rivals was the one making headlines.
AMD’s CEO Lisa Su turned heads on the firm’s “Advancing AI” occasion when she stated she expects the marketplace for AI compute infrastructure to soar previous $500 billion within the subsequent three years.
Supply: Wikimedia Commons
However she didn’t cease there.
Regardless of Nvidia being the 800-pound gorilla on this area, Su urged AMD has an actual shot at taking a number of the AI large’s market share.
Based mostly on what AMD showcased throughout the occasion, I imagine she is likely to be proper…
AMD’s Risk to Nvidia’s AI Dominance
Su went on to disclose a brand new chip from AMD referred to as the MI355X that’s designed to go toe-to-toe with Nvidia’s industry-leading AI processors.
The MI355X is AMD’s most aggressive AI chip but.
Supply: AMD
It’s a dense, high-performance accelerator that’s constructed to deal with the sorts of huge workloads corporations like OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft demand.
AMD claims its new chip collection is quicker than Nvidia’s counterparts and represents main beneficial properties over earlier variations.
That alone is thrilling. However I’m much more intrigued by how AMD intends to compete on this area.
Fairly than mimicking Nvidia’s tightly built-in ecosystem, AMD is leaning into open requirements. It’s providing a extra modular, versatile strategy for corporations that need management over their stack.
To that finish, Su previewed AMD’s new “Helios” rack system, a full end-to-end AI platform constructed round this open infrastructure.
She referred to as it: “a sport changer.”
These racks embody every part a supercomputer wants, together with its brains (CPUs), muscle tissues (GPUs) and quick web connections (NICs), all working collectively.
It’s an answer geared toward each frontier mannequin coaching and large-scale AI inference. And it brought about my Spidey-sense to set off.
As a result of relating to AI coaching, one firm prefers to play by its personal guidelines.
After all, I’m speaking about Tesla.
On Might 20, Elon Musk instructed CNBC that Tesla and xAI would proceed shopping for plenty of GPUs from Nvidia, but in addition “some from AMD” and doubtlessly others.
I don’t suppose it’s loopy to learn extra into that assertion.
You see, Tesla is at the moment constructing out huge compute clusters to help its Dojo supercomputer and energy its Optimus humanoid robotic.
The size of this effort is gigantic. And it requires {hardware} that’s quick, inexpensive and versatile.
Nvidia gives best-in-class efficiency, no query. However it comes bundled in what some engineers name a “black field.” In different phrases, it’s a closed system the place Nvidia controls almost each layer, from the chip to the software program stack to the networking gear.
For a corporation like Tesla — which has an extended historical past of constructing in-house and optimizing from the bottom up — that form of vendor lock-in may not be excellent.
That’s why AMD’s open strategy is smart to me right here.
It might let Tesla customise its AI infrastructure with out being tied to 1 proprietary ecosystem.
It might additionally decrease prices at a time when GPU provide continues to be constrained and costs stay sky-high.
If the MI355X delivers even near Nvidia’s efficiency, Musk might have each cause to begin shifting to AMD’s merchandise.
That’s very true for Optimus, which Musk stated could possibly be “price greater than [Tesla’s] automobile enterprise and value greater than full self-driving.”
Supply: Wikimedia Commons
It’s additionally price noting that Tesla has made a behavior of quietly adopting AMD chips for in-vehicle functions over the previous few years.
So this wouldn’t be the primary time Musk gave Su’s workforce a shot.
Right here’s My Take
AMD’s inventory has fallen nicely beneath final yr’s highs.
Supply: Yahoo Finance
However that might quickly change.
I don’t imagine Tesla will abandon Nvidia in a single day.
However AMD simply made its most convincing pitch but, with a powerful product and a method that offers corporations like Tesla extra management.
I imagine it’s solely a matter of time earlier than we might see Elon announce a serious AI deployment constructed on AMD {hardware}.
And the 800-pound gorilla is likely to be in for a critical combat.
Regards,
Ian King
Chief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing
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