AMD

Did you know SpaceX’s “latest generation broadband satellites” use AMD chips? The chipmaker just bragged about that in Q3 2024 earnings, and it’s news to me.

New PlayStations and Xboxes can’t come soon enough — Q3 gaming revenue is $462M, down from $648M last quarter and $922M before that, “primarily due to a decrease in semi-custom revenue.”

AMD says the MI325X, shipping Q4, will beat Nvidia’s H200. But Nvidia seems a step ahead; it’ll ship “several billion dollars” of its next-gen Blackwell B200 GPU in Q4, too. AMD says its Blackwell competitor, the MI355X, won’t arrive till 2H 2025.

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.

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.

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.