Tag: amd

AMD swallows Nod.ai and gives new life to SHARK

Posted on October 12, 2023 by - News

AMD has snapped up Nod.ai as part of a cunning plan to improve its growing AI capabilities using its SHARK product.

The compiler-based automation software capabilities of Nod.ai’s SHARK software is designed to reduce the need for manual optimisation and the time required to deploy AI models to run across a broad portfolio of data centre, edge, and client platforms.

The company says that the deal should enhance the deployment of AI solutions for its instinct datacentre accelerators, Ryzen AI processors, EPYC processors, Versal SoCs and Radeon GPUs.

The agreement follows the company’s AI growth strategy centres on an open software ecosystem that lowers the barriers of entry for customers through developer tools, libraries and models.

Richardson quits as AMD’s channel chief

Posted on April 18, 2023 by - Moving People, News

AMD North America Channel Chief Terry Richardson is leaving the company after more than 30 years of working in the channel and is believed to be retiring.

Richardson, a 30-year-plus channel veteran who has also held top channel jobs at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP and EMC, joined AMD two years ago and helped build it a robust network of partners.

Richardson’s departure on April 18 comes just three weeks after AMD Head of North America VAR Channels & Commercial Distribution Marty Bauerlein left AMD to take the newly created role of chief commercial officer at D&H Distributing.

Richardson was one of the most respected channel leaders in the business and he is widely attributed with giving AMD achieve a channel footprint it would not have been able to attain without him.

 

Atos builds supercomputer for Max Planck Society

Posted on February 10, 2023 by - News

Atos is building and installing a new high-performance computer for research outfit the Max Planck Society.

The new system will be based on Atos’ latest BullSequana XH3000 platform, which is powered by AMD EPYC CPUs and Instinct accelerators. In its final configuration, the application performance will be three times higher than the current “Cobra” system, which is also based on Atos technologies.

AMD sends in the axemen after poor results

Posted on November 2, 2022 by - News

AMD reported third-quarter 2022 results showing net income falling 93 percent to $66 million and a year-over-year operating loss of $64 million.

The company said it would take cost-cutting measures, including controlling headcount growth.

AMD’s executive vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer Devinder Kumar said: “We will prioritise the key investments for product roadmaps and long-term growth while taking several near-term cost management actions, including prudently controlling operating expenses and headcount growth, while actively managing inventory in line with our revenue expectations.”

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure releases Confidential Compute

Posted on October 21, 2022 by - News

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has released its first Confidential Compute solution powered by AMD EPYC processors to its partners.

Oracle claims the product allows customers to enable Confidential VMs with the help of AMD Infinity Guard and AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) and Secure Memory Encryption (SME).

These features take advantage of security components available in 2nd and 3rd generation AMD EPYC processors available in all OCI’s E3 and E4 shapes.

Nvidia-Intel alliance could scare rivals

Posted on March 25, 2022 by - News

Yesterday’s news that Nvidia and Intel are snuggling up for a glorious alliance could cause some major headaches for the industry.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during a press briefing that he was in talks to use Intel foundries to produce GPUs, a development that could see the dogged rivals join forces.

Data centre tech is based around GPUs and Nvidia holds an 81 percent market share.

All this could be problems for others in the industry especially AMD’s data centre supercomputing ambitions and TSMC’s foundry business.

AMD and Nvidia use TSMC’s foundry. AMD’s strategy so far has been to produce cheaper GPUs with a slightly better performance than Nvidia.

AMD buys Xilinx

Posted on October 29, 2020 by - News

AMD has bought rival chip maker Xilinx in a $35 billion all-stock deal.

Both firms expect the deal to generate $300 million in cost cuts. It will also create a combined company with about 13,000 engineers.

AMD’s CEO Lisa Su will serve as the new CEO of the combined company, while Xilinx’s CEO Victor Peng will continue to lead Xilinx’s operations – being responsible for Xinlinx’s business and growth initiatives.

Both companies expect the deal to close at the end of 2021.

Su said that Xilinx is very strong in some markets, and AMD believes that the deal would enable it “to accelerate some of the AMD products into those markets”.

AMD hires Intel’s McNamara for EPYC push

Posted on January 20, 2020 by - News

AMD has nicked Intel’s executive Dan McNamara to take the chipmaker’s EPYC server processor business to the next level following the launch of last year’s second-generation products, code-named Rome.

McNamara’s title is senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s Server Business Unit. McNamara was most recently senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Network and Custom Logic Group and served on the company’s executive leadership team.

AMD parties like it’s 1999

Posted on January 6, 2020 by - News

Chip challenger AMD has seen its share price reach an all-time high, beating a record it set at the height of the dotcom era in 2000.

Its shares climbing over seven per cent and are now worth $49.10.

AMD was the best-performing S&P 500 company last year, according to Bloomberg, with its valuation climbing over 150 percent.

The growth started around the beginning of 2016, with the vendor’s share price climbing over 2000 per cent since.

BIOS IT and Supermicro get their paws on EPYC

Posted on August 9, 2019 by - News

BIOS IT and SuperMicro have announced the general availability of their latest range of AMD EPYC processor kit.

AMD EPYC 7002 Series Processors are expected to deliver up to 2X the performance-per socket and up to 4X peak FLOPS (floating-point operations per second), per-socket compared to the AMD EPYC 7001 Series Processors are expected to give Chipzilla (Intel) a run for its money.

AMD predicts revenue growth

Posted on May 6, 2019 by - News

AMD CEO Lisa Su said 2019 will be a “revenue growth year” thanks to its next-generation, 7-nanometer processors and GPUs which will appear in the second half of the year.

AMD saw first quarter  revenue fall by 23 percent, but the company’s guidance for full-year revenue was unchanged from the last few months, with the expectation that it will grow in the high single digits.

Rival Intel  lowered its full-year revenue forecast by $2.5 billion last week from a previous estimate, showing that the company expects annual revenue to decline this year.

2019 semiconductor sales fall ten per cent

Posted on May 6, 2019 by - News

Beancounters at research firm IHS Markit have slashed its outlook for 2019 semiconductor sales by more than 10 percentage points, projecting revenue to decline 7.4 percent to $446.2 billion.

The outfit had predicted 2.9 percent growth for 2019 revenue in December.

This would mean that the semiconductor industry is facing its biggest annual percentage decrease since 2009, when chip sales dipped by nearly 11 percent.

AMD looks to take more of the service market

Posted on July 26, 2018 by - News

banner_220x220AMD supremo Lisa Su said that the company is planning to take a much bigger chunk of Intel’s server market thanks to the “incredible opportunities ahead” with AMD’s next-generation, 7-nanometer processors.

Speaking to the gathered throngs, Su said the company began sampling its 7nm graphics chip, or GPU, with select customers in the second quarter and expects to start shipping the product later this year,

Su said. AMD’s 7nm EPYC server CPU, code-named “Rome,” has also started sampling with select partners and will launch in 2019 while the 7nm client CPU will ship sometime after that, the CEO added.

“I do believe we have a very competitive position in 2019”, Su said.

AMD’s progress with its 7nm chip manufacturing process is significant because Intel has been struggling with its 10nm process, which is comparable to AMD’s 7nm and has been delayed for multiple years because of manufacturing issues.

Su reiterated that the company projects to reach mid-single digits in the server market share by the end of the year and double-digits in the mid-term. The company’s EPYC server chip line, which launched a little over a year ago, is now in over 50 platforms, including HPE’s ProLiant DL325 Gen10 server, which Su said offers significantly lower cost per virtual machine than  Intel.

Su said a majority of the EPYC platforms have been shipping to multiple customers, with some deployments ranging from the hundreds to tens of thousands. That contributed to a 37 percent year-over-year growth in AMD’s Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom business to $670 million for the second quarter.

Su said EPYC sales and shipments have grown more than 50 percent sequentially. After seeing a longer qualification period with customers for the first-generation of EPYC, code-named “Naples,” Su said the company hopes for the timeline to tighten with “Rome,” the next-generation chip.

“With Rome, I think there is enhanced interest,” she said.

Su said the company is aiming to increase EPYC adoption in the high-performance computing, data analytics and virtualized enterprise environment segments.

The company’s Computing and Graphics business grew 64 percent year-over-year to $1.09 billion, driven by strong sales of its Radeon graphics products and “continued growth” of its Ryzen CPU products. At the same time, the business saw a 3 percent dip from the previous quarter, which AMD attributed primarily to a dip in revenue from GPU products in the blockchain market.

Channel wins from AMD push

Posted on May 29, 2017 by - News

funny-elephant-push-on-the-car-pictureMoor Insights and Strategy principal analyst Patrick Moorhead, says that the channel will be the winner from AMD’s push into the PC and server chip markets.

Moorhead said that the move will give channel partners more options for meeting growing OEM and customer demand for silicon supplier alternatives to Chipzilla. System makers and businesses have been wanting more choice when it comes to processor vendors. The thought is that more competition will accelerate innovation and drive down prices.

AMD’s upcoming chips should give them options in important segments of the PC and servers spaces, which will be a boon for partners, Moorhead said.

“AMD-powered PCs and servers bring more choice to the channel and, in some circumstances, differentiation for the channels who assort it. Ryzen Threadripper [for PCs] and EPYC [for servers] are unique in very highly threaded environments and EPYC in single-socket systems.”

Intel has long been the dominant player in both PCs and servers, with market shares of 90 percent.

ARM and IBM through its OpenPower efforts are also making a push for a greater presence in the server space, although this is of limited impact.

An AMD meeting with financial analysts unveiled more details about the company’s upcoming Threadripper and EPYC processors – as well as next-generation Vega Frontier GPUs for workstations – giving the industry greater hope for more competition in the chip market and a boost to the somewhat stagnant PC and server markets.

Threadripper is a high-end PC chip with 16 cores and 32 threads and scheduled for release this summer.
Meanwhile AMD is bring in Ryzen processors aimed at systems like 2-in-1s and gaming desktops, as well as low-end systems, which are due out later in the year and are based on the Zen microarchitecture.

AMD has also announced EPYC, codenamed “Naples” and based on Zen and that will offer up to 32 cores and 64 threads with bulked-up capabilities around interconnect and memory. It could also help reduce costs for large enterprises and cloud datacenters by enabling a single-socket EPYC server to potentially replace a two-socket system powered by Intel Xeons.

We are expecting to see more details at the Computex 2017 show next week in Taiwan.
Moorhead was confident Threadripper will do well in both OEMs and the channel.

“AMD announced that the Ryzen desktop [chip] would be in the top five desktop OEMs by the end of June, and I have seen models already from Lenovo, Acer and Asus. EPYC is newer, and I’m interested in seeing third-party testing. Intel has 99 percent share in servers, so there is a strong desire to have an alternative,” he said.

“The channel should take advantage of all the channel training AMD has available and also trial the products to get up to speed with how they work, Technical training is the fairest priority, followed by go-to-market training.”

The channel should use market development funds from both AMD and OEM, he added.

AMD makes Grasby EMEA president

Posted on November 6, 2015 by - Moving People, News

f5697b3fd254b65ad587865f7373dff7AMD has announced that its Corporate Vice President Worldwide Component Channel Darren Grasby, 45, has been appointed to the newly-created position of president of AMD EMEA .

Lisa Su, president and chief executive officer at AMD said that EMEA was a “key region” with a broad set of important customers, partners and markets for AMD.

She said that Grasby was a proven leader who is ideally suited to drive deeper customer, partner, and stakeholder relationships across EMEA as a part of helping AMD accomplish our long-term business goals

“Over the past eight years Darren has proven to be an effective and results-driven leader. This new role will allow him to broaden his influence and reach in supporting AMD’s customers, partners and employees while also promoting and enhancing our regional reputation and prominence as an innovative technology pioneer.”

Grasby said: “I am honored to take on this role, particularly as it allows me to promote AMD’s technology leadership and highlight the innovation that is central to AMD’s business philosophy across a broad geographic region. At its core, AMD is focused on building great products to the benefit of our partners and customers. EMEA is widely renowned as a stronghold of opportunity and I’m excited to expand our pipeline for success across the region.”