AMD Plans Cut-Down Instinct AI Accelerators For China To Comply With US Policies

AMD wants to compete with NVIDIA and others in China by offering cut-down AI GPUs to bypass US regulations.

During the recent Q2 earnings call, AMD's CEO, Lisa Su, highlighted the importance of AI for the company and acknowledged the immense demand from China. AMD's data center revenue for the previous quarter accounted for the largest share, and it is expected that the company will shift its focus toward artificial intelligence in the upcoming quarters. However, the major hindrance behind this move is the presence of US sanctions, which prevents companies like AMD and NVIDIA from doing business in "hostile" nations such as China.

AMD currently employs the Instinct MI250 & the upcoming MI300 in its high-end AI GPU arsenal, which features up to 153 Billion transistors & 192 GB HBM3 memory. While AMD can't sell the MI300 in China, the company plans to develop downgraded variants to comply with US policies. Here is what the AMD's CEO has to say on this:

China is a very important market for us, certainly across our portfolio, as we think about certainly the accelerator market. Our plan is to of course be fully compliant with U.S. Export controls, but we do believe there’s an opportunity to develop product for our customer set in China that is looking for AI solutions, and we’ll continue to work in that direction.

Dr. Lisa Su, AMD CEO (Q2 Earnings Call

NVIDIA is currently implementing this strategy, which is offering A800 and H800 GPUs in China These variants are also cut-downs of the original Hopper and Ampere GPUs and they offer relatively lower performance. Despite this fact, the GPUs are selling like hotcakes and have inflated to a tremendous price of USD 70,000. This move has undoubtedly worked for NVIDIA; hence, AMD intends to follow Team Green to capitalize on the AI hype in China. Intel has also started shipping its own cut-down variant of the Gaudi2 AI accelerators to China.

While AMD didn't disclose specifics of the cut-down variants to be offered, we believe it will involve the original Instinct branding but with a different name (similar to NVIDIA's case). It is also important to highlight that one shouldn't expect a press release or official documentation for such AI GPUs since they can circulate in the market anytime. AMD is going full steam ahead into the AI game just like all the other tech giants who'll be following NVIDIA's success. CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, said that the market has a 5-10 years growth period with a market op exceeding $150 Billion US in the next few years.

GPU manufacturers are certainly betting their future on the AI hype. Companies like Intel have also entered the competitive market, and it won't be long before we see AMD taking its share from the hype.