Artificial intelligence takes center stage this week, with announcements from AMD, some edge AI news and the introduction of Gemini. Among other updates, the recent funding increase to private semiconductor firms.

AMD MI300 to challenge Nvidia H100

At the recent “Advancing AI” event, AMD has launched multiple new AI products, including the Instinct MI300 Series data center AI accelerators, ROCm 6 open software stack, and Ryzen 8040 Series processors with Ryzen AI. The event was intended to showcase growing momentum for AMD-powered AI solutions, particularly in data centers; on the occasion Microsoft, Dell Technologies, HPE, Lenovo, Meta, Oracle, Supermicro and others announced their adoption of the new AMD Instinct MI300X and MI300A data center AI accelerators for training and inference solutions. Analysis website SemiAnalysis has provided a benchmark-by-benchmark comparison of AMD MI300 performance versus Nvidia H100 GPU, highlighting that some AMD results only apply to the “forward pass” processing step. However, in terms of performance – including the software stack, a key element to take advantage of raw hardware power – SemiAnalysis sees AMD “rapidly improving.” SemiAnalysis also highlighted that OpenAI plans to support AMD’s GPUs, including MI300, in the standard Triton distribution starting with the upcoming 3.0 release.

AMD joins the “AI PC” race

Besides Intel, AMD is also touting the “AI PC” concept – that is, adding AI capabilities to mainstream x86 PC processors. The new AMD Ryzen 8040 Series mobile processors feature an integrated Ryzen AI NPU on-die on select models, offering up to 1.6x more AI processing performance than prior AMD models. AMD is also making Ryzen AI3 Software available for users to build and deploy machine learning models on their AI PCs. Laptops with Ryzen AI can offload AI models to the NPU, thereby freeing up the CPU to reduce power consumption while extending battery life. AMD Ryzen 8040 Series processors are expected to be available from OEMs including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Razer, beginning in Q1 2024.

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Let’s start this week’s news roundup with a “chip war” update which does not concern China. The Biden administration has reportedly forced a Saudi venture capital firm to sell its shares in Silicon Valley AI chip startup Rain Neuromorphics. According to Reuters, the move follows other actions the US has taken to slow AI development in the Middle East.

Smartphone market is set for an upturn

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the drop in smartphone sales is finally over: the market research firm expects worldwide smartphone shipments to grow 7.3% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2023. The market recovery will continue in 2024 with 3.8% growth expected, followed by low single-digit growth for the rest of the forecast period, resulting in a five-year compound annual growth rate of 1.4%. According to IDC, the smartphone sector is entering the new era of low single-digit growth and lengthened refresh cycles, as the market is maturing. While the total available market will remain below pre-pandemic shipment levels throughout the forecast, average selling prices and market value will remain significantly higher than before.

Credit: IDC

Synopsys 2023 revenues

Synopsys has reported results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023. Revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023 was $1.599 billion, compared to $1.284 billion for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2022. Revenue for fiscal year 2023 was $5.843 billion, an increase of approximately 15% from $5.082 billion in fiscal year 2022.

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