AMD unveils new AI, server chips at San Francisco event
Adds company and industry background, updates share movement, adds analyst comment, paragraphs 3-6 and 9
AMD's MI325X AI chip to enter mass production in Q4 2024
New MI350 series chips to launch in H2 2025 with improved performance
AMD shares fall 3.3%, Nvidia shares up 1.7%
By Max A. Cherney
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 10 (Reuters) -Advanced Micro Devices AMD.O said on Thursday it planned to start mass production of a new version of its artificial-intelligence chip called the MI325X in the fourth quarter of the year, as it seeks to beef up its AI chips in a market dominated by Nvidia.
AMD announced at an event in San Francisco that it also plans to release its next-generation MI350 series chips in the second half of 2025. These chips include an increased amount of memory and will also boast a new underlying architecture that the company said will improve performance significantly over the prior MI300X and MI250X chips.
Demand for AI processors from major technology firms such as Microsoft MSFT.O and Meta Platforms META.O is far outpacing supply from Nvidia and AMD, allowing the semiconductor companies to sell as much as they can produce.
That has driven a massive rally in chip stocks over the past two years, with AMD's shares up about 30% since a recent low in early August. But investors are keen to see new technology improvements from these companies to determine if they can sustain this momentum.
AMD shares were down 3.3% on Thursday afternoon, while shares of rival Nvidia were up 1.7% and Intel shares were down 0.5%.
"There are no new customers announced so far," said Summit Insights research analyst Kinngai Chan, adding that the stock had gained ahead of the event in anticipation of "something new."
Santa Clara, California-based AMD said vendors such as Super Micro Computer SMCI.O would begin to ship its MI325X AI chip to customers in the first quarter of 2025. The AMD design aims to compete with Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture.
The MI325X chip uses the same architecture as the already-available MI300X, which AMD launched last year. The new chip includes a new type of memory that AMD said will speed AI calculations.
AMD also unveiled several networking chips that help speed moving data between chips and systems inside data centers.
The company announced the availability of a new version of its server central processing unit (CPU) design. The family of chips formerly codenamed Turin includes a version of one of them that is designed to keep the graphics processing units (GPUs) fed with data - which will speed AI processing.
The flagship chip boasts nearly 200 processing cores and is priced at $14,813. The whole line of processors uses the Zen 5 architecture that offers speed gains of as much as 37% for advanced AI data crunching.
In July, AMD raised its AI chip forecast to $4.5 billion for the year from its previous target of $4 billion. Demand for its MI300X chips has surged because of the frenzy around building and deploying generative AI products.
This year analysts expect AMD to report data center revenue of $12.83 billion, according to LSEG estimates. Wall Street expects Nvidia to report data center revenue of $110.36 billion. Data center revenue is a proxy for AI chips needed to build and run AI applications.
Reporting by Max Cherney in San Francisco; additional reporting by Aditya Soni and Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru
Editing by Sonali Paul, Peter Henderson and Matthew Lewis
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