AMD reveals what we can expect from its Instinct MI400 accelerator soon. It is intended to compete with Nvidia Vera Rubin.
In the margins of CES in Las Vegas, AMD clarifies its plans for the Instinct MI400 accelerator. MI400 is intended to succeed MI300 and compete with the Vera Rubin tandem that Nvidia announced earlier this week.
The Instinct MI400 accelerator will roll off the production line at TSMC and will be manufactured in premiere on the chipmaker’s 2 nm production line. The high density with smaller and more efficient transistors should give AMD’s hardware a unique asset.
Three variants
The Instinct MI400 family will initially appear in three flavors:
- MI455X: this is an AI accelerator tailored to powerful rack systems, such as the previously announced Helios rack developed by HPE.
- MI440X: this will most likely be a slightly lighter variant of the above chip. Based on AMD’s strategy with the MI300 series, we can assume that this AI accelerator will fit into conventional servers.
- MI430X: this will be a GPU that is not only intended as an AI accelerator, but should support more general accelerated workloads.
Helios with the Instinct MI455X will be the real answer to Nvidia Vera Rubin, and specifically the Vera Rubin NVL72 rack system. In Helios, AMD combines its accelerators with as yet unspecified Epyc Venice Zen 6 cores. This should deliver 2.9 exaflops of FP4 AI computing power. Helios seems to be at least competitive with Vera Rubin NVL72.
More than hardware
All major AI players are already interested in Instinct MI400 and the Helios concept. To what extent AMD can develop into an equally leading party as Nvidia remains to be seen. After all, Nvidia dominates not only with hardware, but also with the software ecosystem around it. The MI400 family only tells half the story: to break through, AMD must make Rocm competitive with Cuda, and that is not self-evident.
AMD is not officially launching Instinct MI400 at CES yet. For that, we have to wait until the second half of this year.