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On December 6, 2023, AMD hosted an event focused on advancing AI to unveil the next generation of Instinct MI300 series AI chips for data centers. The Instinct MI300X is a pure GPU-only design with a cDNA 3 architecture that delivers breakthrough performance for HPC and AI job execution.
According to a report by foreign media Seeking Alpha, an analysis report by Citigroup, a foreign company, pointed out that Microsoft's data center division is the largest buyer of AMD Instinct MI300X chips, and has begun to perform work for large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4. Previously, AMD CEO Lisa Su said that AMD's AI chip sales are expected to reach $3.5 billion in 2024, higher than the previous expectation of $2 billion.
Although AMD has not disclosed the pricing of the Instinct Mi300X, a person familiar with the matter revealed that the price of each computing card with a built-in Instinct Mi300X chip is about 1At $50,000, it's more affordable than competitor NVIDIA's products of the same level. Because, at present, the H100 PCIe 80GB HBM2E version of Nvidia is priced at about $30,000 to $40,000 or even higher in the market. As for the more powerful H100 SXM5 80GB HBM3 version, the pricing is higher.
AMD's Instinct Mi300X is designed with a chiplet architecture that mixes 5nm and 6nm process technologies and has 153 billion transistors. It uses the Infinity Fabric solution, with a total of 28 module chips, including 8 HBMs and 4 compute chips, and each compute chip has 2 budget units based on the CDNA 3 architecture, for a total of 80 compute units.
This also means that the entire chip has 320 compute units and 20,480 stream processors. For yield reasons, AMD cut some of its computing units, with 304 and 19,456 stream processors actually used. In addition, the HBM3 capacity reaches 192GB, providing 53TBS memory bandwidth and 896GB s Infinity Fabric bandwidth.
According to AMD's official performance tests, the Instinct Mi300X outperforms the existing NVIDIA H100 80GB on the market, and may even pose a threat to the upcoming H200 141GB. At present, in addition to Microsoft's largest buyer of the Instinct Mi300X, Meta has also purchased a large number of AMD Instinct Mi300 series products, and Laminiai is the first company to publicly use the Mi300X.
AMD set a record for data center chips, with GPUs sold 3.8 billion
AMD on Tuesday reported financial results for the fourth quarter of 2023 and for the full fiscal year. The company ended the year with strong results, with its data center GPU business growing on the back of increased demand for the AI boom. However, the company reported lower-than-expected guidance, resulting in its share price trading at **6% in after-hours trading. An interesting issue here is that the company expects to sell $3.5 billion worth of Mi300-series AI GPUs by 2024, although it says it won't be **throttled, which essentially means that demand for new GPUs is at least somewhat limited – Nvidia's AI GPUs have been in short supply due to high demand, and the wait time for new GPUs is said to be 52 weeks, so many expect AMD to run into similar issues.
AMD also issued a lower-than-expected guidance, saying its first-quarter revenue from client, embedded and gaming segments is expected to decline sequentially. In particular, semi-custom products, which are mainly made up of console SoCs, are expected to see a significant double-digit percentage decline of "over 30%". The company also ** that first-quarter data center segment revenue will be flat compared to the previous quarter, as a seasonal decline in server sales may be offset by strong growth in AI and HPC GPU sales, i.e., the Instinct Mi300 series of products.
Despite the looming challenges ahead, AMD reported mixed results for the final quarter of fiscal 2023. The company reported fourth-quarter sales of 61$6.8 billion, up 10% year-over-year, while AMD's total revenue for 2023 was 22.6$800 million, down 4% year-on-year. The company's performance this year has been mixed, with on the one hand, it increasing sales of data center processors, but on the other hand, shipments of its client platforms have declined, just like gaming hardware sales.
AMD reported fourth-quarter 2023 revenue of 61$6.8 billion, net profit of 6$6.7 billion, a significant year-over-year and sequential increase. The company's gross margin increased to 47%.
For the full year, AMD's revenue was 226US$800 million, down 4% year-on-year, with a net profit of 8$5.4 billion, down 35% year-on-year, is the second consecutive year of decline in AMD's net profit. Firm. AMD's gross margin, meanwhile, increased 1% year-over-year to 46%.
"We delivered strong results in 2023, with revenue and profit growth sequentially and year-over-year on the back of record quarterly AMD Instinct GPU and EPYC CPU sales, as well as higher AMD Ryzen processor sales," said Lisa Su, CEO of AMD. "Demand for our high-performance data center portfolio continues to accelerate, which enables us to deliver strong annual growth at an incredibly exciting time when AI is reshaping nearly every segment of the computing market. ”
Record data center platforms
AMD's Data Center business unit reported fourth-quarter 2023 revenue of 22$8.2 billion (up 38% year-over-year) with reported operating income of 6$6.6 billion (up 50% year-over-year) as the company ramped up shipments of EPYC processors for data centers and increased shipments of Instinct GPUs for AI and high-performance computing applications. This is the best quarterly performance ever for AMD's data center business, though we should keep in mind that the division's results now include sales of Pensando hardware.
For the full year, AMD's data center segment posted net revenues of 64At $9.6 billion, up 7% year-over-year, it was the business unit's best year. At the same time, the division's operating income fell by 31% to 12$6.7 billion.
Client-side platform sales declined, but there are signs of recovery
In terms of client platform sales, AMD Client Business Unit revenue increased to 14. in the fourth quarter of 2024 as the PC market began to recover and AMD successfully boosted sales of the latest ZEN$6.1 billion, up 62% year-over-year with 4-based Ryzen 7000 series processors. The segment achieved revenue of $55 million, up 136% year-over-year.
However, due to the weakness of the PC market last year, AMD's client PC business fell 25% year-on-year to 46$5.1 billion, with a full-year loss of $46 million, is a huge change as the company's client PC division will have an operating income of $11 in 2022$900 million.
Game section
AMD's Gaming Hardware Business Unit, which sells discrete Radeon graphics processors and system-on-chips for gaming consoles, reported fourth-quarter 2023 revenue of 13$6.8 billion, down 17% from the same period last year, and operating income fell to $224 million. AMD said that while sales of Radeon GPUs have increased, sales of console SoCs have declined.
The annual revenue of the game hardware business was 62US$1.2 billion, down 9% year-on-year, with operating income of 9$7.1 billion, up 2% year-on-year. Once again, AMD attributed the decline in revenue to declining sales of its console processors, which are declining every year. Despite this, AMD's gaming division remains the company's second-largest business.
Embedded business
According to AMD, the revenue of AMD's embedded division is $10$5.7 billion, down 24% from the previous year, primarily due to reduced inventory levels from customers. However, the segment remained profitable, with a net profit of 4$6.1 billion.
For the full year, embedded revenue was $5.3 billion, up 17% from the previous year. This increase was primarily due to the full-year revenue contribution from the acquisition of Xilinx, which closed in February 2022. The segment reported revenue of 26US$2.8 billion, up 17% from the previous year.
Summary
While AMD's results look good and good overall, the company is quite conservative about the outlook for the first quarter.
AMD expects revenue of approximately $5.4 billion and $300 million for the first quarter of 2024. The company** revenue from its data center segment will be flat from the previous quarter, as the seasonal decline in server sales is likely to be offset by strong growth in AI and HPC GPU sales, i.e., the Instinct MI300 family of products.
At the same time, revenue from client, embedded, and gaming is expected to decline sequentially. In particular, revenue from semi-custom products, which primarily include console SoCs, is expected to see a significant double-digit decline.
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