AMD

AMD is acquiring ZT Systems, a leading provider of AI infrastructure. AMD is calling it a “next major step” for its AI training and inferencing solutions, in a move that will clearly help it compete with Nvidia’s dominance in AI offerings. ZT Systems will join the AMD’s data center solutions group once the $4.9 billion transaction closes.

OneXPlayer just spilled the beans on the AMD Radeon RX 7800M — cuz it’ll be in its new graphic dock, the OneXGPU2. As Liliputing points out, the last time someone designed a portable eGPU around a Radeon laptop chip, most other boutique handheld makers followed suit.

Big FPS boosts for handhelds when docked, I hear, but quite pricey too.

There are four CPUs in the new Ryzen 9000 series, which includes the beastly 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 9950X flagship. Pricing still hasn’t been disclosed, but it’s currently expected to align with the Zen 4 series chips.

The Finland-based Silo AI is described as the “largest private AI lab in Europe” and has provided AI solutions for companies like Phillps, Rolls-Royce, and Unilever. In addition to Silo AI, AMD also acquired the AI startup Nod.ai last year as it aims to keep up with the likes of Nvidia.

IDC and Canalys disagree whether this is the second or third consecutive quarter of growth, but either way, the slump is definitively behind us — and we haven’t even seen the impact of this year’s Qualcomm, AMD and Intel chip launches yet.

NotebookCheck writes that the first Asus laptops with Ryzen AI 300 chips, codename Strix Point, will launch July 17th at an event originally scheduled for July 8th. Best Buy has changed its ship dates to July 28th, from July 15th originally.

Two weeks till launch, four weeks till availability.

AMD CEO Lisa Su is back in Taiwan to deliver the latest on AMD’s chips in an AI era. Nvidia has already hinted that AMD’s Strix CPUs are about to launch, but rumors have also revealed AMD could unveil its new Ryzen 9000 series desktop CPUs. AMD’s Computex keynote kicks off at 9:30PM ET / 6:30PM PT / 2:30AM UK (June 3rd). You can tune in below.

The Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink) Promoter Group, will work to create an open standard to help AI accelerators “communicate more effectively” within data centers and boost performance. Other members include AMD, HP, Broadcom, and Cisco — but not Nvidia, which has AI chip-linking tech of its own.

Because it sure didn’t paint a rosy picture of gaming in the Q1 2024 earnings call — “The demand has been quite weak,” said AMD CFO Jean Hu. AMD’s gaming biz was down 48 percent year over year on both semiconductor (PS5, Xbox, Steam Deck etc) and GPU sales, and it’s forecasting a “significant double digit percentage” decline for the rest of the year too.

AMD also says an AI PC refresh cycle will help PCs return to growth in 2024, and that 150 software vendors will be developing for AMD AI PCs by year’s end. The company’s top priority is ramping AI data center GPUs, though, which are “tight on supply.” New AI chips are coming “later this year into 2025,” too.

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association has released details about its new standard, which it says is better positioned to handle the demands of gaming, networking, and AI.

JESD239 GDDR7 is the first JEDEC standard DRAM to use the Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM) interface for high frequency operations. Its PAM3 interface improves the signal to noise ratio (SNR) for high frequency operation while enhancing energy efficiency. It also says GDDR7 has double the bandwidth over GDDR6, up to 192 GB/s per device, and double the number of channels.

We don’t expect to see GDDR7 out in the world until Nvidia and AMD release next-gen GPUs, which could come before the end of 2024 but is a long way from being confirmed.

Despite an AMD deal to support FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling, Starfield launched with an FSR 2 implementation that lagged behind the newer approach that adds frame generation for smooth gameplay.

Bethesda already rolled out support for Nvidia’s DLSS frame generation, and says the FSR 3 update will ship later this month. It’s beta testing the tech next week, along with a FormID change that should “improve stability for saves that have visited many locations.”

Sony shipped 10 million PS5s in just five months last year, and Xbox hardware sales were up 3 percent last quarter. But AMD, whose gaming business provides their chips, is forecasting a “significant double-digit percentage” decline in gaming revenue now that we’re in “the fifth year of what has been a very strong gaming cycle.”

We won’t hear from Sony again till Valentine’s Day, but Microsoft just confirmed: next quarter, Xbox hardware revenue will decline year-over-year.

Microsoft has internally suggested the next gen of consoles might arrive in 2028.

While that doesn’t quite tell us how well AMD’s competing with Nvidia in the AI gold rush, AMD CEO Lisa Su says she’s not sitting back: “The demand for compute is so high that we are seeing an acceleration of the roadmap generations here.”

She confirmed Zen 5 CPUs are still on track for this year, with server chips in second half. Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, MSI, and “other large PC OEMs” will begin putting Ryzen 8000 notebooks on sale in February.

Last week’s Intel earnings suggested the tide had turned, and AMD’s Q4 and FY23 agree: PC sales are getting back to where they should be.

It was a crummy year for Ryzen CPUs, losing $46M on 25 percent lower revenue, but things changed last quarter: AMD chips sold 62 percent better YoY for $55M in operating profit. Radeon GPU sales were up too.

Meanwhile, Microsoft saw “PC market unit volumes were at roughly pre-pandemic levels.”

AMD is axing the stream-and-monitor-your-own-PC-games feature, and its announcement made me laugh:

For users that game remotely with AMD Link, one important announcement is that AMD is ending support for the AMD Link software application

No kidding! Did you use it? I preferred the hardware-agnostic Steam Link, but there’s also Moonlight and Parsec. Nvidia also axed its similar GameStream feature in 2022.