AMD solely introduced its Instinct MI300, arguably the corporate’s first really aggressive GPU for AI inferencing and coaching, again in November final 12 months. It’s actually solely been promoting in massive numbers for the previous couple of months. But already its bringing in about as a lot cash as AMD’s complete CPU operations.
That contains CPUs for servers, CPUs for cloud computing, for desktop PCs, for laptops, the works. So says AMD’s CEO Lisa Su, talking on the firm’s most up-to-date earnings name for monetary wonks, held yesterday (through Seeking Alpha).
Su was responding to a high-ranking bean counter from Swiss financial institution UBS, who was attempting to drill down into precisely how a lot cash AMD has been raking in over latest months particularly from its nascent AI GPU operations.
The analyst reckoned AMD most likely notched up within the area of $1.5 billion in revenues for September alone and speculated that following months have to be much more. To which Su had this to say:
“We truly did higher within the Data Center GPU enterprise relative to our preliminary expectations. So, you’ll think about that the enterprise was truly better than $1.5 billion [in September of this year]. I imply, we’re truly seeing now our [AI] GPU enterprise actually approaching the size of our CPU enterprise.”
That’s some achievement and little doubt helps clarify why AMD’s share worth is about 2.5x what it was in mid 2022. Of course, all the things is relative. While AMD’s burgeoning AI GPU gross sales look stellar in isolation, they pale in comparison with Nvidia’s.
In the identical investor name, one other analyst identified that Nvidia would seemingly obtain an unimaginable $50 to $60 billion in AI GPU gross sales in 2025, whereas AMD would possibly simply hit $10 billion at greatest.
Still, nevertheless you slice it something particularly to do with gaming appears like awfully small beer for AMD nowadays. Revenues for its “Gaming” enterprise, which incorporates not solely gaming graphics playing cards for PCs but in addition the customized AMD-engineered APUs contained in the Xbox and PlayStation consoles, amounted to only $462 million in the newest quarter.
That represents simply 6.8% of AMD’s general revenues. And shrinking. Likewise, AMD’s CPUs for desktop and laptop computer PCs pulled in practically $2 billion over the identical interval.
It does all make you marvel how motivated AMD may be in the case of GPUs for PCs when there’s a lot extra money to be made elsewhere. On the opposite hand, there isn’t any assure that the AI GPU market will proceed to increase. And graphics chips for PCs are a long-term core competence for AMD.
So, here is hoping AMD is totally dedicated to enhancing its gaming graphics. We’ll discover out quickly sufficient in the case of AMD’s next-gen playing cards, what with Lisa Su confirming that RDNA 4, seemingly within the type of the Radeon RX 8800 XT, will arrive “early” in 2025.
