Lisa Su, Chairman and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), during the AMD Advancing AI event in San Jose, California, US, on Wednesday, December 6, 2023. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. revealed… It is called accelerator chips that it said would be able to run AI programs faster than competing products. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
AMD on Monday announced new artificial intelligence chips as it seeks to establish itself as a leader amid competition with the likes of Nvidia and Intel.
“AI is our top priority and we are at the beginning of a very exciting time for the industry as AI transforms almost every business, improves our quality of life, and reshapes every part of the computing market,” President and CEO Lisa Su said during the Computex technology conference in Taipei.
During a keynote, Su unveiled the Ryzen AI 300 series for the next generation of AI-enabled laptops. The line could compete directly with upcoming Intel products Moon Lake And Qualcomm Snapdragon X. In partnership with Microsoft, these chips will power laptops equipped with the tech giant’s chatbot assistant.
Su also unveiled the new Ryzen 9000 series for desktop PCs, calling them the “world’s fastest consumer PC processors” for gaming and content creation.
Both lines are expected to be launched in July. This comes less than two months after AMD in April announced new processors that can run AI workloads – the Ryzen Pro 8040 for laptops and the Ryzen Pro 8000 for desktops.
Chip companies are racing to launch faster, more powerful processors to stay relevant in the AI race. Nvidia on Sunday unveiled its next-generation AI chips called “Rubin,” a successor to the previous “Blackwell” model, which was just announced in March.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has pledged to release new AI chip technology every year, faster than the company’s previous two-year timeline. AMD also plans to release new AI chipset technology every year.
AMD on Monday detailed its data center chipset roadmap, with Instinct MI325X accelerators — an enhanced version of the MI300 series — planned for availability in the fourth quarter. The Instinct MI350 series, which will be built on the next-generation architecture, is scheduled to launch in 2025 while the Instinct MI400 series is scheduled for launch in 2026.
Su on Monday also previewed the latest fifth-generation EPYC server processors, which are expected to be launched in the second half of this year to “continue the leadership performance and efficiency of the AMD EPYC processor family.”
Like Nvidia, AMD doesn’t manufacture its own chips. Instead, it outsources the manufacturing of its chips to foundries, mainly to the world’s largest chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation.
The 5th generation Ryzen AI 300, Ryzen 9000 and EPYC chipsets will be built on the latest “Zen 5” architecture.
“You’ll see Zen 5 everywhere from supercomputers to data centers and PCs,” Su said.
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