It Took AMD 10 Years to Break into Data Centers, Now It’s Poised to Lead AI
After a decade of relentless innovation, AMD has not only solidified its position in data centers but is also rapidly gaining ground in the AI space. What started as a small player with its EPYC processors in 2017 has evolved into a $2.8 billion business, now accounting for 50% of AMD’s revenue in Q2 2024. With its sights set on AI workloads, AMD is set to disrupt the market further, using the same formula that helped it conquer the data center space—high performance, superior energy efficiency, and competitive TCO. “From virtually zero data center presence in 2017 to a $2.8 billion business in Q2 2024, AMD’s rise shows that it’s not just a CPU company anymore—AI is the next frontier,” said one of the execs from AMD at the backdrop of Advancing AI 2024. Powering the Next Wave of AI and Cloud Evolution At the keynote speech of AMD Advancing AI 2024, AMD chief Lisa Su said “Since launching in 2017, EPYC has become the CPU of choice for the modern data centre. The largest cloud providers offer more than 950 EPYC instances and have deployed EPYC widely throughout their infrastructure and their most important services -things like Office 365, Facebook, Salesforce, SAP, Zoom, Netflix, and any more.” AMD’s 5th generation of EPYC processors, particularly the newly launched Turin, are driving a shift in the data center landscape by offering tailored solutions for both cloud computing and AI workloads. The latest processors, built on the ‘Zen 5’ core architecture, feature up to 192 cores and offer unparalleled speed and efficiency, specifically designed to handle demanding workloads in enterprise, AI, and cloud environments, alongside improving core performance and TCO. “EPYC’s energy-efficient processors are not only improving cloud performance but also cutting operational costs by up to 67% compared to older systems, freeing up resources for AI and cloud innovation,” said Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, server business, AMD The flagship EPYC 9005 Series processors offer up to 2.7 times the performance of competitors, ensuring AMD maintains its leadership in the data center space. The launch introduces a range of innovations. Notably, the 64-core AMD EPYC 9575F processor, engineered for GPU-powered AI solutions, can boost up to 5GHz, offering a 28% faster data processing speed compared to its closest competitor, whose top speed is 3.8GHz. This performance enhancement is critical for AI workloads, where data must be rapidly fed into GPUs for processing. As McNamara added, “AMD has earned the trust of customers who value demonstrated performance, innovation, and energy efficiency.” Zen 5 Architecture Drives AI and Enterprise Workloads Source: AMD AMD in the Data Centre Game “AMD has proven it can meet the needs of the data centre market and give customers the standard for performance, efficiency, solutions, and capabilities for cloud, enterprise, and AI workloads,” said McNamara. AMD’s strategy of on-time roadmap execution has built trust among customers, particularly in sectors where high performance and energy efficiency are critical. At the AMD Advancing AI 2024 event currently underway in San Francisco, USA, AIM noted that Reliance and TATA are leveraging 5th Generation AMD EPYC Processors to fuel India’s data centre ambitions. “Our data centre business has gone from virtually zero in 2017, to 50% of the business today, and Q2 was $2.8 billion so all that will begin for the data centre,” said McNamara. With its sights set on AI workloads, AMD is set to disrupt the market further, using the same formula that helped it conquer the data centre space—high performance, superior energy efficiency, and competitive TCO. The 5th Gen EPYC processors also deliver significant benefits in enterprise workloads, offering up to 17% better instructions per clock (IPC) for cloud and enterprise workloads, and up to 37% higher IPC for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) tasks compared to the previous ‘Zen 4’ architecture. This translates into faster time-to-insights for science and HPC applications and improved performance in virtualized infrastructure, where EPYC processors deliver 1.6 times the performance per core over Intel Xeon servers. In the AI space, the 192-core EPYC 9965 stands out by delivering up to 3.7 times the performance on end-to-end AI workloads, making it a crucial component for generative AI solutions. This processor significantly boosts throughput performance for models like Meta’s Llama, making it highly suitable for enterprises deploying generative AI models. With broad support from major hardware providers such as Cisco, Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo, and Supermicro, AMD’s 5th Gen EPYC processors are set to power the next wave of data center innovation. On the closing of the keynote, Su mentioned that she celebrated her 10th anniversary as the CEO of AMD. “So, this week, I actually celebrated my 10th anniversary with all of my AMD colleagues. You guys are really the best. There is no better way I could spend a week than launching AMD products. I feel incredibly fortunate to be part of this industry where everything that we do means so much and is essential to every aspect of our daily lives. You can count on all of us at AMD to continue to push the envelope on high performance computing and AI. And we are just getting started!” she concluded. When Su took over as CEO in late 2014, AMD was on the brink of bankruptcy. Its stock price hovered around $3 a share. Within ten years, Lisa managed to transform the company from a market value of $2 billion at the end of 2014 to around $250 billion in 2024.
What started as a small player with its EPYC processors in 2017 has evolved into a $2.8 billion business, now accounting for 50% of AMD’s revenue in Q2 2024.
“Our data center business has gone from virtually zero in 2017, to 50% of the business today,” said Dan McNamara, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Server Business, AMD.
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As a rare blend of engineering, MBA, and journalism degree, Vandana Nair brings a unique combination of technical know-how, business acumen, and storytelling skills to the table. Her insatiable curiosity for all things startups, businesses, and AI technologies ensures that there's always a fresh and insightful perspective to her reporting. She now hosts her tech segment 'Point Break' on AIM Tv.