AMD Launches Instinct MI325X AI Chip: A Game-Changer for Data Center GPU Market Against Nvidia’s Dominance

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – AMD launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) chip called Instinct MI325X. The US giant primarily competes with Nvidia’s data center graphics processor (GPU) called Blackwell.

The Instinct MI325X is expected to begin production by the end of 2024.

Since AMD’s AI chips are seen as replacements for Nvidia products, this could put price pressure on Nvidia. Even though Nvidia has the upper hand by getting a total profit of around 75% from its GPUs, the demand has increased over the past year.

Nvidia’s Blackwell chips were introduced last March and are said to be sold in the range price US $ 30,000-40,000 (Rp. 468-624 million). Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the chip was already attracting interest from several technology giants developing AI technology.

Next-generation AI like OpenAI’s ChatGPT requires massive data centers full of GPUs to do the necessary processing. This then is what makes the demand for AI chips soar.

In recent years, Nvidia has dominated much of the data center GPU market, and AMD has historically been close behind. Now, AMD aims to take over market share from its rivals in Silicon Valley or at least control a large part of the market, which it says will be worth US$500 billion by 2028.

“Demand for AI continues to grow and is actually exceeding expectations. It’s clear that the level of investment is increasing everywhere,” said AMD CEO Lisa Su, quoted by CNBC International, Friday (11/10/2024).

AMD did not reveal key cloud or Internet customers for its Instinct GPUs at the event, but the company has previously revealed that Meta and Microsoft are buyers of its AI GPUs and that OpenAI is being used for some applications.

AMD did not reveal pricing for the Instinct MI325X.

When the MI325X was launched, AMD accelerated its product schedule to release new chips on an annual schedule to better compete with Nvidia and take advantage of the rise in AI chips.

The new AI chip follows the MI300X which started shipping late last year. AMD’s 2025 chip is called MI350, and its 2026 chip is called MI400, the company said.

The launch of the MI325X will compete with Nvidia’s upcoming Blackwell chips, which will begin shipping in large quantities early next year.

(fab/fab)