Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is setting out to upset Nvidia’s domination of the AI market with a new line of MI300 “accelerator” chips with 150 billion transistors, which are said to run artificial intelligence software faster than competitors’ products, according to the chipmaker. The new chips also have 2.4 times as much memory as Nvidia’s H100.
The long-anticipated lineup was revealed by AMD Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su, alongside a massive new forecast of $604 billion in terms of AI chip industry growth.
The eye-watering number is two times higher than the company’s original projection AMD gave only months ago, further underscoring the enormity of the industry boom and how quickly things are evolving for AI hardware.
The announcement of the new AI chips set to rival Nvidia and other chip brands is a major moment in AMD’s fifty-year history and is pitting the two brands head-to-head for supremacy over the AI chip market.
With their new MI300 line, AMD said they already have customers lining up to use the chips such as Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc.
After the announcement, Nvidia shares dropped 1.4% to $458.98, but AMD’s stock only dipped 1% to $117.24.
Nvidia chips have been in massive demand by data centre operators, which has aided the company’s huge growth and share value rise, taking the company’s value to over $1.1 trillion USD, but AMD is aiming to disrupt the market in large language models used by AI chatbots because there is an opening for more AI chip players.
Beyond having 2.4 times more memory than Nvidia’s H100, the new AMD chips also has 1.6 times as much memory bandwidth, which AMD will use to further boost its performance, and are said to be much better at inference (the method of running software when it’s ready for commercial and everyday use).
Not to be outdone, Nvidia will be coming out with its next-generation chips to rival AMD’s offering, and additionally, Nvidia is likely to have a whole new architecture for the processor next year.
In terms of forecasting, AMD has asserted revenue from its accelerators would reach $3 billion in 2024, and analysts expect the company’s total sales will soar to new heights of $40.4 billion.
