Nagpur Investment：Forrest Norrod On How AMD Is Fighting Nvidia With ‘Significant’ AI Investments

AMD’s top data center executive said the chip designer had “no choice” but to “dramatically” increase its investments in AI and release accelerator chips at a faster cadence in the face of unrelenting generative AI innovation and Nvidia’s aggressive strategy.

Forrest Norrod, executive vice president and general manager of AMD’s data center solutions business unit, made the comments in an interview with CRN a day after the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company announced on June 3 that it will release a new data center GPU every year instead of every two years. This new cadence will begin in the fourth quarter with the 288-GB Instinct MI325X, which offers significantly greater high-bandwidth memory than Nvidia’s H200.

[Related: Analysis: As Nvidia Takes AI Victory Lap, AMD Doubles The Trouble For Intel]

What’s driving AMD to move faster is a relentless pace of innovation in generative AI models as well as optimizations in the math operations that are key to their computation.

“This market is moving so fast, there's so much innovation and invention in the models and the math that we've got to maintain a very fast cadence,” said Norrod.

Another major factor behind AMD’s decision to commit what Norrod called “significant” resources to its AI efforts is Nvidia, which was first to announce a plan to release new data center accelerator chips every year instead of every two years last fall. The rival detailed its expanded road map a day before AMD’s announcement, disclosing new GPU architectures set to debut in 2025, 2026 and 2027 following the expected debut of Blackwell later this year.

Norrod said he believes Nvidia decided to speed up its accelerator chip release cadence in response to increasing competition, particularly AMD, which released the Instinct MI300X in December as a data center GPU that competes with Nvidia’s H100 and H200 chips.

“Nvidia, quite candidly, stepped on their accelerator pedal, and when they saw that—'holy crap. AMD has got a real part; they're going to be a real competitor’—they very deliberately stepped on the accelerator trying to block us and everybody else out. And so we're responding to that as well,” he said.

With AMD getting support for MI300 chips from major server OEMs and cloud service providers such as Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Supermicro and Microsoft Azure, the company has forecasted $4 billion in data center GPU revenue this year.

While that represents a fraction of the $19.4 billion Nvidia made from data center compute products in the first quarter alone, Norrod said the company’s new one-year cadence for products will allow it to catch up with the schedule for Nvidia’s flagship GPUs.

“We think we are closing the gap, narrowing the gap between the introduction of Nvidia's part and the introduction of our same generation part,” he said.

But AMD’s strategy to combat Nvidia’s AI computing dominance isn’t just about delivering faster performance or higher bandwidth. Norrod said the company’s strategy also relies on the embrace of open software and open standards, which will prevent customers from getting locked into working with one vendor.

“When you’re locked in and there’s no alternative or you’re not able to avail yourself of an alternative, the costs are whatever the supplier chooses to chargeNagpur Investment. And I would look at Nvidia's financials, it's been remarkable to see the progress they’ve made on both their revenue as well as the marginKanpur Investment. So I think there's that obvious issue,” he said.

While AMD has so far been focused on shipping the Instinct MI300X to its largest customers, including cloud service providers and OEMs, the company plans to make a greater emphasis on enabling commercial channel partners to sell servers equipped with the accelerator chip in the second half of this year, according to Norrod.

“You’ll see us shifting very hard to enable enterprise through multiple channels this year, including the channel,” he said.

C.R. Howdyshell, CEO of Cleveland, Ohio-based systems integrator Advizex, told CRN that he finds a lot of promise from how AMD Instinct accelerator chips can help grow his business based on a recent commitment his company received from AI-focused cloud service provider Hot Aisle to buy a cluster of Dell PowerEdge XE9680 servers powered by MI300X GPUs.

“I think we’re going to see more opportunities just like this because […] there are customers [who] want to look at these opportunities to differentiate and think about what makes them different from a customer perspective as well as a go-to market. They can get very good, distinct performance from AMD—enough to make a bet on the business,” he said.Lucknow Wealth Management

Alexey Stolyar, CTO of Northbrook, Ill.-based systems integrator International Computer Concepts, told CRN that while AMD has made the right move in accelerating its data center road map and customers are looking for alternatives due to pricing and availability reasons, he thinks demand for the company’s Instinct GPUs isn’t as high as he thinks “it should be.”

Part of the issue is that Nvidia’s current-generation GPUs like the H100 are becoming easier to obtain after several months of shortages, according to StolyarMumbai Wealth Management. But he also sees customers continue to prefer Nvidia because of its pervasive software stack.

“People are just so familiar with Nvidia tools that they don't see other tools,” he said.

What follows is a transcript of CRN’s in-depth interview with Norrod, who discussed how the company has “dramatically” increased its investments in AI to compete with Nvidia, how it plans to lean more heavily on channel partners to sell Instinct-powered servers later this year and what factors have led early adopters to use the MI300X instead of Nvidia’s GPUs.Varanasi Wealth Management

The executive also talked about how he sees AMD’s upcoming Instinct MI325X and MI350 chips competing against current and future Nvidia GPUs, how AMD views the viability of hybrid CPU-GPU packages like the MI300A and Nvidia’s Grace Hopper Superchip, and the benefits of AMD’s open standards approach versus Nvidia’s proprietary platform. In addition, Norrod gave his thoughts on Intel’s move to disclose the pricing of its eight-chip Gaudi 3 platform.

The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.