Today at the Microsoft Ignite 2023 conference, tech firm AMD unveiled several new products and showed off a range of AI-powered new technologies, including a powerful new accelerator called AMD Instinct MI300X, and updates to their well-known EPYC and Ryzen CPUs.
A senior executive said that these upgrades are important because they help make cloud computing, AI, and PCs smarter and more efficient.
Vamsi Boppana, Senior Vice President, AI, AMD, spoke about the company's focus on AI technology. He explained that AMD is working to integrate AI into everything from cloud-based services to personal computers.
AMD is doing this through a mix of their own CPUs, GPUs (graphics processing units), accelerators, and AI engines. They are also teaming up with Microsoft and other companies to make these technologies better and more widely available.
“AMD is fostering AI everywhere – from the cloud, to the enterprise and end point devices – all powered by our CPUs, GPUs, accelerators and AI engines,” said Boppana.
AI in Azure AMD Instinct MI300X
One of the big announcements was the integration of AMD's new Instinct MI300X accelerator into Microsoft's Azure cloud service. Azure is set to deploy a new class of virtual machines, optimized for AI tasks, using this accelerator.
This development is particularly notable as it marks the first instance of Azure employing this advanced technology, promising more efficient and powerful AI processing capabilities for Azure customers, said the company.
Cloud Computing with AMD EPYC Processors
AMD is also updating its EPYC processors, which are used in servers for cloud computing. The new 4th Gen EPYC processors will power a range of virtual machines that can handle general tasks, work with large amounts of data, or do intense computing work.
Company said that these new processors are expected to perform up to 20% better for general and data-heavy tasks and twice as well for computing-heavy tasks compared to the previous models. Microsoft plans to start showing these off early in 2024.
Another highlight was the Azure NGads V620 series, now widely available. This series is a part of Azure's GPU-accelerated virtual machines, which are great for graphics-heavy tasks like gaming or 3D rendering.
These machines use AMD's Radeon PRO V620 GPUs and 3rd Gen EPYC CPUs, which are designed to handle more demanding work or support more users at once.
AI for Personal Computers
For personal computer users, AMD has been working on the Ryzen AI, an AI accelerator that is part of their Ryzen 7000 Series processors. This means that over 50 different computer models now have advanced AI capabilities built-in.
AMD and Microsoft have already made these processors better by adding Windows Studio Effects, and they plan to keep working with software developers to bring new AI features to consumers, said the company.
