AMD Brags That Its AI Chips Could Match Nvidia's

Artificial intelligence (AI) chips from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are about 80% as fast as those from Nvidia Corp., with a future path to matching their performance, according to a report by an AI software firm, Stephen Nellis reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: Tech companies are hoping that AMD will be a strong challenger to Nvidia.

Nvidia dominates the market for the powerful chips that are used to create ChatGPT and other AI services that have swept through the technology industry in recent months.

The popularity of those services has pushed Nvidia's value past $1 trillion and led to a shortage of its chips that Nvidia says it is working to resolve.

But in the meantime, tech companies are looking for alternatives, with hopes that AMD will be a strong challenger. It prompted MosaicML, an AI startup acquired for $1.3 billion this week, to conduct a test comparing AI chips from AMD and Nvidia.

MosaicML evaluated the AMD MI250 and the Nvidia A100, both of which are one generation behind each company's flagship chips but are still in high demand.

MosaicML found AMD's chip could get 80% of the performance of Nvidia's chip, thanks largely to a new version of AMD software released late last year and a new version of open-source software backed by Meta Platforms called PyTorch that was released in March.

Hanlin Tang, chief technology officer of MosaicML, said that the company believes that further software updates from AMD that are in the works should help its MI250 chip match the performance of Nvidia's A100.

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