AMD is Finally Catching up with NVIDIA Blackwell
AMD CEO Lisa Su said on October 30 that the company’s MI325 advanced GPU accelerator is a game-changing product that will set off against NVIDIA’s H200, while its MI350 series will compete against Blackwell. With NVIDIA beating them in the GPU race, Su expects the company to close the performance gap faster than anticipated with their new hardware series. Previously, Andrew Dieckmann, CVP and GM of data centre GPU at AMD, also acknowledged the same. “We are trying to take very representative benchmarks that are realistic. I can tell you that in our customer engagements, especially regarding inference workloads, we have yet to find a single workload that we cannot outperform NVIDIA on,” he said, adding that AMD doesn’t always outperform NVIDIA. “However, if we optimise for a specific solution, we can beat them”, added Dieckmann. Su also subtly pointed out AMD’s aggressive stance in the AI GPU market, positioning itself as a challenger to NVIDIA, during the quarterly earnings call. Announcing the third quarter earnings, Su raised its AI guidance revenue to exceed $5 billion, up from the previous quarter’s forecast of $4.5 billion in the wake of the AI boom. Betting big on AI developments, Su calls it the beginning of the “AI super cycle”, referring to anticipated demand across all computing domains. That said, she acknowledged the challenges of sustaining growth in an intensely competitive market, with hyperscalers selectively deploying AMD products. “This is really the beginning of what I like to call an AI super cycle. We believe AI is going to be in every aspect of computing” said Su. A New Record for AMD In Q2 FY24, AMD’s revenue stood at $6.8 billion, an 18% increase year-on-year, with a gross margin of 50%. The company’s operating income remained at $724 million, while the net income was $771 million. Su said, “We delivered strong third quarter financial results with record revenue led by higher sales of EPYC and Instinct data centre products and robust demand for our Ryzen PC processors,” AMD CFO Jean Hu also said that it is making strategic investments to position AMD as the end-to-end AI infrastructure leader and drive long-term profitable growth. During the quarter, AMD generated $3.5 billion in revenue from its data centres, up 122% year over year. This growth can be attributed to increased shipments of AMD’s Instinct GPU and EPYC CPU. “Our gross margin improvement has been primarily driven by the mix, especially Data Center business continues to be the strong growth driver of our business, accounting for more than 50% of our revenue mix,” revealed Hu, emphasizing AMD’s gross margin improvement driven by the data centre segment. Lisa Su also emphasised AMD’s software advancements with the ROCm stack, aiming to offer an “open alternative” to NVIDIA’s closed software ecosystem, appealing to customers wanting flexibility and cost-effective AI compute options. “ROCm now provides AI developers with a truly open software alternative that has been deployed and validated at scale,” said Su. Their newly launched Ryzen AI Pro 3000 series focuses on industry-leading performance in the personal computing sector. “Our third-generation AI-enabled processors deliver unprecedented AI processing capabilities with incredible battery life and seamless compatibility for the applications users depend on”, said Jack Huynh, senior VP and GM of Computing and Graphics Group at AMD. Lisa Su also expects the data centre AI accelerator’s TAM to reach $500 billion by 2028 and is projected to grow by more than 60% annually. Lumpy future ahead She, however, cautioned about an uncertain future as AMD prepares to ramp up production and optimise for larger deployments—quite the opposite of NVIDIA’s rapid, consistent growth in AI segments. “We feel very good about the growth opportunities. I would say that it might be lumpy. In general, these are large customer acquisitions and it’s not always predictable exactly which quarters you would expect the significant build-out” said Su, pointing towards AMD’s realistic approach. Su hinted that the faster cadence of AMD’s AI products (the likes of MI300, MI325, and MI350) was deliberate, helping them close the competitive gap more quickly. This accelerated pace could strain AMD’s resources but underscores their commitment to becoming a serious contender. “We have successfully accelerated our product development pace to deliver an annual cadence of new Instinct products. Our next-gen MI350-series silicon is looking very good and is on track to launch in the second half of 2025 with the largest generational increase in AI performance we have ever delivered”, said Su. However, NVIDIA is already a step ahead of Blackwell, with their Rubin GPUs set to release in 2026, and AMD is also planning to launch their MI400X series GPU at the same time. Acquisitions and Partnerships Galore In the client segment, their revenue was up by 29% year-on-year at $1.9 billion. AMD’s recent partnerships inside the ecosystem include industry leaders like Oracle, which is using its Instinct GPU accelerators to power its OCI computer supercluster to manage AI workloads. AMD extended its support to the development of Meta’s Llama 3.2 open-source models and wants to assist developers in building agentic applications and other groundbreaking AI products using its hardware. They’ve also partnered with Microsoft to enable Copilot + on their AMD-powered AI PCs. Su acknowledged that capturing market share from entrenched competitors in the data centre GPU segment requires time and patience. Building trust with hyperscalers like Microsoft, Meta, and others has been a focus, suggesting that AMD still faces hurdles in gaining broader adoption but remains committed to long-term partnerships. “This is a multi-generational journey. We’ve always said that. We feel very good about the progress. I think next year is going to be about expanding both customers as well as workload,” said Su. AMD closed the acquisition of Silo AI to accelerate the deployment of AI models on AMD’s hardware. AMD also recently announced an agreement to acquire ZT Systems, an AI computing infrastructure provider. The acquisition is subject to regulatory clearances and is likely to be completed by the first half of 2025. Moreover, AMD and Intel also announced a collaboration to broaden the x86 ecosystem by developing an advisory group that will include Dell, HP, Lenovo, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat. “Establishing the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group will ensure that the x86 architecture continues evolving as the compute platform of choice for developers and customers,” said Lisa Su. AMD’s projected revenue in Q4 2024 is set to rise towards $7.5 billion, with an approximate gross margin of 54%. Jean Hu also said, “We are on track to deliver record annual revenue for 2024 based on significant growth in our Data Center and Client segments.”
Su cautioned about an uncertain future as AMD prepares to ramp up GPU production and optimise for larger deployments—quite the opposite of NVIDIA’s rapid, consistent growth in AI segments.
Su cautioned about an uncertain future as AMD prepares to ramp up GPU production and optimise for larger deployments—quite the opposite of NVIDIA’s rapid, consistent growth in AI segments. 
["AI (Artificial Intelligence)", "AMD", "NVIDIA"]
["Go", "AMD", "API", "programming_languages:R", "AI", "ML", "programming_languages:Go", "Aim", "Rust", "llm_models:Llama", "NVIDIA", "R", "AI (Artificial Intelligence)"]
["AI", "ML", "Aim", "R", "Go", "Rust", "API", "llm_models:Llama", "programming_languages:R", "programming_languages:Go"]
Supreeth is an engineering graduate who is curious about the world of artificial intelligence and loves to write stories on how it is solving problems and shaping the future of humanity.