AMD: The New Nvidia
14th December 2023
Welcome to AI Collision 💥,
In today’s collision between AI and our world:
AMD reckons smaller is better
News coming to you from robots, and now AI
Coke guns
If that’s enough to get the liquid cooling pumping, read on…
AI Collision 💥 tiny chips lead to a big week for AMD
It all started with a WhatsApp message (as good ideas so frequently do).
It was 13 July, the AI-boom kicked off by the November 2022 release of ChatGPT was in full swing and I sent a message to my publisher Paolo.
Chiplets.
I’ve been looking at the progress of chiplets for a while now and I’m starting to see more and more coverage about their use, their potential and how the big-tech hardware giants see them as the future of chip design… particularly AMD.
You’ve heard of computer “chips” but what about “chiplets”?
Did you know that not only are chiplets one of the backbones of the high-tech world around us, but also that they may be the very reason that tech giant AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) ends up as a bigger and, possibly, more valuable player in the AI arms race than Nvidia?
Hard to fathom, considering Nvidia is now sporting a market cap around $1.17 trillion and AMD is around $222 billion…
But then again, I remember a day when Nvidia was only worth around $15 billion and AMD was around the same mark.
And if AMD gets its way and the future of AI-powered technology is chiplets, then who’s to say those valuations aren’t flipped around? Or at least to say that AMD isn’t sitting up alongside Nvidia with a $1 trillion-plus market cap?
So, what’s a chiplet, and why is it important to AMD and AI?
AMD has been on the chiplet path for a number of years now. It was an intentional strategy as it figured it would enable central processing units (CPUs) – the heart of a computer – to work better.
A chiplet is really just a bigger chip, broken down into smaller “chiplets”, enabling each chiplet to do a more specific task, better.
The intricacies around how they’re made, the performance benefits and how they integrate with software are technical to say the least. And while I could try explaining it as simply as possible, AMD’s product architect, Sam Naffziger does a great job of stepping you through chiplets in an IEEE Spectrum article here.
AMD is pressing on full steam ahead with their chiplet foray. Just days ago, a new patent explained how AMD was looking to use chiplets in new graphic processing units (GPUs) (the heart of AI power) design.
It’s widely assumed that chiplets are certainly beneficial to CPU development, and that is something AMD has been a leader with. But the use of chiplets in GPUs… well, the jury’s out on that one, but it seems that AMD has a hunch that it might be the right path to follow.
As of yet, Nvidia hasn’t gone down this path, but rumours are circulating that it too might be looking to use chiplets in future GPU design.
Or at least, they know if AMD is taking that angle, then perhaps it should be looking into it too, you’d think.
What’s clear is that AMD is a step ahead of Nvidia when it comes to chiplets and their use in high-performance computing. And considering AMD’s stock has broken higher by over 18% in the last week, maybe the market is also switching on to the fact that AMD might be switching on to a real game changer in the AI arms race.
AI gone wild 🤪
When I ran the poll last week about whether you’d want to get short, sharp market updates from me, avatar AI me, or you weren’t really bothered either way…
Well…
I had no idea that THIS was around the corner.
That’s right, a 100% AI avatar news channel. Take a look at the 21-minute-long video for yourself here.
I will admit that a few of them are really good, and to be honest, when it comes to the news, I almost think I’d prefer an AI avatar compared to some of the news reporting that we see on regular mainstream news channels.
A couple of them, however, do look like they’re stuck in a video loop (because technically they are!) and it’s a tinge robotic.
But that’s ok. News is a little robotic anyway, right?
I think the key thing is that somewhere in the mix, there’s real journalism and reporting taking place. You’d hope that’s the case, at least.
I mean, you don’t really know that real journalism is taking place with the regular news, so comparing the two, I guess this isn’t all that different.
I can’t imagine the ratings will be explosive though. Not Tucker Carlson levels at least. There’s probably a niche for it – just which niche I’m not 100% sure of yet.
But this is another example of how quickly the quality of AI-generated video and avatars content is developing. It’s getting better, faster and there might be a time soon when they won’t tell you if they’re AI or not, and frankly, you won’t be able to tell anyway.
When it comes to the news, though, I’m not really sure anyone is that bothered.
Boomers & Busters 💰
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom 📈
AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) up 16%
Appen Ltd (ASX:APX) up 13%
Oddity Tech (NASDAQ:ODD) up 10%
Bust 📉
Cyngn (NASDAQ:CYN) down 39%
Wearable Devices (NASDAQ:WLDS) down 32%
AeroVironment (NASDAQ:AVAV) down 11%
From the hive mind 🧠
Well, it’s official. AI is going to take your job. But probably not how you expect. See what happened at Sport Illustrated to understand what I mean…
If you’ve got an illegal immigration problem, I reckon I know what might stop it. How about robot dogs powered by AI, probably with guns strapped to their back?
Limewire is remarkable. It was a music torrent site, then a crypto, still a crypto, but now a generative AI music platform. Wild, crazy, illegal? Either way, the fact that it’s still going is quite something.
Artificial Pollteligence 🗳️
The last few issues of AI Collision 💥 we’ve been saying that capital has been flowing into AI and that it looks like its shaping up for 2024 to be a real “market moment” for AI in the stock market.
But what do you think?
Weirdest AI image of the day
Guns designed and made by famous brands – r/weirddalle
ChatGPT’s random quote of the day
“If you think about the technology trends that we've seen over the last 10, 20 years... AI is 10 times, 100 times more than that in terms of how it's impacting everything that we do. It's that big.” – Dr Lisa Su (AMD CEO)
Thanks for reading see you next Tuesday, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief
AI Collision
