AMD shows off new higher performing AI chip at CES event

A person types on a laptop computers as President of the Treasury Board Anita Anand speaks during an Artificial Intelligence roundtable attended by AI experts and leaders from across Canada in Gatineau, Que., on Monday, May 27, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su showed off a number of the company’s AI chips on Monday at the CES trade show in Las Vegas, including its advanced MI455 AI processors, which are components in the data center server racks that the company is selling to firms like ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

Su also unveiled the MI440X, a version of the MI400 series chip designed for on-premise use at businesses. The so-called enterprise version is designed to fit into infrastructure that is not specifically designed for AI clusters. The MI440X is a version of an earlier chip that the U.S. plans to use in a supercomputer.

AMD is one of Nvidia’s strongest rivals but has struggled to have as much success. In October, AMD signed a deal with OpenAI that, in addition to the financial upside, was a major vote of confidence in AMD’s AI chips and software. But it is unlikely to dent Nvidia’s dominance, as the market leader continues to sell every AI chip it can make, analysts said.

At the Monday event, OpenAI President Greg Brockman joined Su on stage and said chip advancements were critical to OpenAI’s vast computing needs.

Looking to the future needs of companies like OpenAI, Su previewed the MI500 and said it offered 1,000 times the performance of an older version of the processor. The company said the chips would launch in 2027.

At the event, Su hosted Daniele Pucci, CEO of Generative Bionics, an Italian AI developer, who unveiled GENE.01, a humanoid robot.

“Our first commercial humanoid robot will be manufactured in the second half of 2026,” Pucci said at the event.

Earlier on Monday, Nvidia showed off its next-generation Vera Rubin platform, which is made up of six separate chips. CEO Jensen Huang said it was in full production. It is expected to debut later this year.

In October, AMD signed the deal with ChatGPT maker OpenAI that will add billions of dollars to the company’s annual revenue. The first deployment of AI chips that incorporate AMD’s MI400 series will roll out this year. Nvidia has generated tens of billions of dollars in quarterly revenue from its AI chip sales, a feat that AMD has struggled to achieve thus far.

OpenAI is a key customer of AMD and executives at the Santa Clara, California-based company expect the deal to lead to significant additional new sales.

Also on Monday, AMD launched its Ryzen AI 400 Series processors for AI PCs, alongside Ryzen AI Max+ chips for advanced local inference and gaming. Intel held a launch event earlier for its Panther Lake chips that it said would be available for order on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Max Cherney in San Francisco and Gnaneshwar Rajan in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman and Thomas Derpinghaus)