AMD Unveils its New AI chip to rival Nvidia’s Blackwell

At an event in San Francisco, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) launched its new Instinct MI325x artificial-intelligence chip that is taking direct aim at Nvidia’s latest Blackwell series.

The company marks AMD’s latest effort to expand its share in the lucrative artificial intelligence computing sector, where Nvidia has maintained a stronghold for years.

Key Points

• AMD’s MI325X chip is based on the same architecture as last year’s MI300X.
• AMD claims their 256GB Instinct MI325X GPU surpasses NVIDIA’s 141GB H200 processor in AI inference tasks.
• It is powered by the CDNA 3 architecture, the MI325X boasts 256GB of HBM3E with 6.0TB/s bandwidth, offering 1.8x more capacity and 1.3x more bandwidth than the H200, along with 1.3x higher peak FP16 and FP8 compute performance.
• According to AMD, the successor to the MI325X, expected in 2025, will be named MI350, and in 2026, the MI400 will follow.
• The new MI325X and MI350 series are projected to feature increased memory, significantly enhancing performance over the older MI300X and MI250X chips.
• AMD announced that the Instinct MI325X will enter production later this year, with shipments starting in the first quarter of 2025.
• Pricing details remain undisclosed, as the Instinct MI325X is typically sold as part of a complete server.

Background

The new AI chip succeeds the MI300X, which began shipping late last year.

With this development, AMD could challenge NVIDIA’s pricing strategy, as NVIDIA has been enjoying significant gross margins due to high GPU demand over the past year.

NVIDIA has dominated the data center GPU market in recent years, while AMD has typically held the second position.

Now, AMD aims to capture a larger market share from its Silicon Valley rival, targeting a market worth $500 billion by 2028.

AMD’s AI Chip Powers Large Language Models

The Instinct MI325X AI chip from AMD is a powerful accelerator, capable of handling the complex computational tasks required by large language models (LLMs).

Its advanced architecture and extensive parallel processing capabilities allow for faster training of LLMs compared to traditional CPUs, reducing development time and costs.

The MI325X also boosts LLM performance, enhancing their efficiency and responsiveness in practical applications.

By providing the necessary computational power for training and deploying advanced LLMs, the MI325X fosters innovation in various AI fields, including natural language processing, machine translation, and content generation

News Gist

AMD has launched its Instinct MI325x artificial-intelligence chip, directly competing with Nvidia’s Blackwell series.

This marks AMD’s latest attempt to expand its share in the lucrative AI computing sector.

AMD claims it will continue to increase memory capacity in its upcoming MI350 and MI400 chips.

The MI325x is expected to start shipping in the first quarter of 2025.