According to a report from wccftech, AMD CEO Lisa Su has indicated that she believes the AI Supercycle has just started, and the company has accelerated its product development plans to meet the substantial market demand.

In addition to NVIDIA, AMD is a significant player in the AI market as well. This is not only due to its market impact but also because the company has significantly expanded its AI product portfolio over the past few quarters, attracting attention from major clients like Microsoft and Amazon.

While AMD has not yet replicated NVIDIA’s success in the market, the company remains optimistic about the future, which is why it believes the AI boom has only just begun.

A few months ago, AMD outlined its AI chip development roadmap for the next year. The “Advancing AI” event in this October will showcase the next-generation Instinct MI325X AI chip.

The flagship Instinct MI350 AI chip is scheduled for release in 2025, followed by the Instinct MI400 AI chip in 2026. Despite AMD’s advancements, there remains a generational gap, as competitor NVIDIA is poised to launch its Blackwell architecture AI chips in the coming months.

This move is particularly noteworthy as AMD is focusing on competing with NVIDIA’s CUDA on the software front.

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• [News] AMD Unifies RDNA and CDNA into UDNA Architecture, Aiming to Compete with NVIDIA’s CUDA
• [News] AMD Could Emerge as a Prospective Buyer for Intel’s Potential Sale of Altera

(Photo credit: AMD)

Ahead of Intel’s upcoming board meeting in mid-September, rumors have been circulating that the struggling giant may be mulling to selling its FPGA unit Altera, with AMD and Marvell being potential buyers. However, according to an interview with Altera’s CEO by CRN, Altera’s plan for an initial public offering (IPO) remains unchanged, as it pursues to be listed by 2026.

The information is confirmed by Sandra Rivera, Altera’s CEO. Citing her remarks, CRN notes that the FPGA unit is working on its plan, which involves selling a stake in Altera, not the entire company. Rivera further stated that this has been Altera’s communicated strategy for over a year, with an IPO planned for 2026.

Citing Rivera, the report pointed out that though Altera began operating independently from Intel at the start of 2024, it is still in the process of separating from many of the general and administrative functions of its parent company, with a target completion date of January 1, 2025.

Intel acquired Altera in 2015 for USD 16.7 billion, and the latter dropped its name afterwards, known as the Programmable Solution Group under the U.S. semiconductor giant.

It was not until 2023 that Intel announced its intention to spin off the Programmable Solutions Group into a separate, wholly-owned company. In February, 2024, the FPGA unit announced that it would revive the Altera brand, CRN reported.

The spin-off of the FPGA business is intended to achieve two goals: providing Intel with additional liquidity to fund CEO Pat Gelsinger’s costly revitalization strategy and enhancing the business opportunities for the FPGA company, according to CRN.

Intel’s board is set to meet this week to discuss restructuring plans, which may include separating its design division from its foundry operations. Citing Intel CFO David Zinsner’s comments at an investor meeting last week, a report by CNBC notes that dividing the two businesses would be a logical move, as the company is trying to create more separation between these two businesses.

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• [News] AMD Could Emerge as a Prospective Buyer for Intel’s Potential Sale of Altera
• [News] Intel Reportedly Considering Foundry Spin-Off or Merger to Mitigate Losses

(Photo credit: Intel)

According to a report from The Register, DPU developer Xockets recently filed a lawsuit, accusing AI chip giant NVIDIA, Microsoft, and intellectual property risk management company RPX of colluding to avoid paying Xockets the fees it is owed, violating federal antitrust laws, and intentionally infringing on its patents.

The report states that in addition to seeking monetary compensation, Xockets is also requesting an injunction. If granted, this injunction would prevent NVIDIA from selling its upcoming Blackwell architecture GPUs.

Per Reuter’s report, Xockets, founded in 2012, claims that its invention, the Data Processing Unit (DPU), plays a critical role in some of NVIDIA’s and Microsoft’s systems. The company states that its technology helps offload and accelerate tasks that would otherwise place a heavy burden on server processors.

Reportedly, Xockets founder Parin Dalal began filing a series of DPU technology patents in 2012. These patents describe architectures used for the linear downloading, acceleration, and isolation of data-intensive computational operations from server processors.

Xockets claims that its DPU-related patents cover various applications including cloud computing, machine learning, security, network overlay, stream data processing, and cloud computing architectures. Xockets alleges that Microsoft and Mellanox, which was acquired by NVIDIA in 2020, which was acquired by NVIDIA in 2020, have infringed on these patents.

In a recent statement, Xockets claimed that NVIDIA has utilized DPU technology patented by Xockets, allowing NVIDIA to monopolize the AI server market using its GPUs. Meanwhile, Microsoft has allegedly monopolized the AI platform market using NVIDIA GPUs.

Xockets further claimed that it has made effort to engage in sincere negotiations with NVIDIA and Microsoft, but these attempts have been rejected.

Xockets’ lawsuit reveals that it actually demonstrated the relevant technology to Microsoft in 2016, and the technology was subsequently adopted by Mellanox within the same year for cloud computing downloads used by Redmond and other clients.

Additionally, NVIDIA’s ConnectX smartNIC, BlueField DPU, and NVLink switch, which are crucial for extending AI training and inference deployments across large GPU clusters, are said to infringe on Xockets’ patents.

Regarding this matter, NVIDIA has declined to comment, while Xockets’ spokesperson has also not provided any additional explanation.

The report highlights that Microsoft and NVIDIA may not be Xockets’ only targets but are at least the most profitable ones. Other companies, such as Broadcom, Intel, AMD, Marvell, Napatech, and Amazon, are also actively developing products similar to NVIDIA’s ConnectX, BlueField, and NVLink.

Regarding the lawsuit, the judge overseeing the case has approved a preliminary injunction hearing to be held on September 19.

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• [News] NVIDIA’s Blackwell Overcomes Delays, as GB200 Reportedly Sets for December Mass Production
• [News] Foxconn Remains Unfazed Despite NVIDIA’s GB200 Delay, with Customers Aim to Secure Their Orders

(Photo credit: Xockets)

As silicon photonics has become a key technology in the AI era, semiconductor giants, including Intel and TSMC, have joined the battlefield. Now another tech giant has engaged in the war, while U.S. chip giant AMD is reportedly seeking silicon photonics partners in Taiwan, according to local media United Daily News.

According to the report, AMD has reached out to Taiwanese rising stars in the sector, including BE Epitaxy Semiconductor and best Epitaxy Manufacturing Company. The former focuses on the design, research and development of silicon photonics platforms, while the latter possesses MOCVD machines to produce 4-inch and 6-inch epitaxy wafers.

Regarding the rumor, AMD declined to comment. Recently, the AI chip giant announced a USD 4.9 billion acquisition of server manufacturer ZT Systems to strengthen its AI data center infrastructure, with the aim to further enhance its system-level R&D capability. Now it seems that AMD is also eyeing to set foot in the market, as silicon photonics is poised to be a critical technology in the future.

Earlier in July, AMD is said to establish a research and development (R&D) center in Taiwan, which will focus on several advanced technologies, including silicon photonics, artificial intelligence (AI), and heterogeneous integration.

Here’s why the technology matters: As chipmakers keep pushing the boundaries of Moore’s Law, leading to increased transistor density per unit area, signal loss issues inevitably arise during transmission since chips rely on electricity to transmit signals. Silicon photonics technology, on the other hand, by replacing electrical signals with optical signals for high-speed data transmission, successfully overcomes this challenge, achieving higher bandwidth and faster data processing.

On September 3, a consortium of more than 30 companies, including TSMC, announced the establishment of the Silicon Photonics Industry Alliance (SiPhIA) at SEMICON.

According to a previous report by Nikkei, TSMC and its supply chain are accelerating the development of next-generation silicon photonic solutions, with plans to have the technology ready for production within the next three to five years.

AMD’s major rival, NVIDIA, is reportedly collaborating with TSMC to develop optical channel and IC interconnect technologies.

On the other hand, Intel has been developing silicon photonics technology for over 30 years. Since the launch of its silicon photonics platform in 2016, Intel has shipped over 8 million photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and more than 3.2 million integrated on-chip lasers, according to its press release. These products have been adopted by numerous large-scale cloud service providers.

Interestingly enough, Intel has also been actively collaborating with Taiwanese companies in the development of silicon photonics, United Daily News notes. One of its most notable partners is LandMark Optoelectronics, which supplies Intel with critical upstream silicon photonics materials, such as epitaxial layers and related components.

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• [News] Silicon Photonics Reshapes the Future; TSMC, ASE Ready to Seize Market Share
• [News] TSMC’s Latest Advancements in CFET, 3D Stacking, and Silicon Photonics

(Photo credit: AMD)

According to a report from tom’s Hardware, Jack Huynh, AMD’s senior vice president and general manager of its Computing and Graphics Business Group, announced at IFA 2024 in Berlin that AMD will unify its consumer microarchitecture “RDNA” and data center microarchitecture “CDNA” under a single name: “UDNA.” This move is expected to compete with NVIDIA’s CUDA ecosystem.

Previously, AMD used the same architecture for both gaming and compute GPUs, known as “GCN.” However, since 2019, the company decided to split the microarchitectures into two distinct designs: RDNA for consumer gaming GPUs and CDNA for data center computing.

Reportedly, Jack Huynh stated that the consolidation into the unified “UDNA” architecture will make it easier for developers to work with, eliminating the need to choose between different architectures without added value.

When asked if future desktop GPUs will have the same architecture as the MI300X, Huynh mentioned that this is part of a strategy to unify from cloud to client. With a single team working on it, the company is making efforts to standardize, acknowledging that while there may be minor conflicts, it is the right approach.

While high-end chips can establish a market presence, the report from tom’s hardware further addressed that the ultimate success depends on software support. NVIDIA built a strong moat 18 years ago with its CUDA architecture, and one of its fundamental advantages is the “U” in CUDA, which stands for Unified.

NVIDIA’s single CUDA platform serves all purposes, using the same underlying microarchitecture for AI, HPC, and gaming.

Jack Huynh revealed that CUDA has around 4 million developers, and his goal is to pave the way for AMD to achieve similar success.

However, AMD relies on the open-source ROCm software stack, which depends on support from users and the open-source community. If AMD can simplify this process, even if it means optimizing for specific applications or games, it will help accelerate the ecosystem.

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• [News] NVIDIA’s H200 vs. AMD’s MI300X: Is the Former’s High Margin Justifiable?
• [News] NVIDIA’s EULA Amendments Tighten Grip, Suppressing Third-Party CUDA Emulation

(Photo credit: AMD)