In a recent earnings call, AMD’s CEO Lisa Su announced the company’s plans to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) chip designed explicitly for the Chinese market. This move comes as a response to the U.S. government’s export restrictions, which have limited the sale of high-end AI chips to China.
The company aims to capitalize on the growing demand for AI chips in China. AMD’s new chip, the MI300 accelerator, is hoped to compete with Nvidia’s dominance in the AI market. It plans to increase its foothold in this key geography by tailoring its products to meet export control requirements.
China is a very important market for us, certainly across our portfolio, as we think about the accelerator market. Our plan is to of course be fully compliant with U.S. Export controls, but we do believe there’s an opportunity to develop a product for our customer set in China that is looking for AI solutions.
The strategy mirrors that of Intel and Nvidia, who have already created modified versions of their AI chips for the Chinese market. With AI being a rapidly expanding field worldwide, AMD sees an opportunity to provide locally-compliant solutions to customers in China looking for AI accelerator chips.
The new AMD chip appears to be the company’s MI300 accelerator. The company is betting heavily on the MI300 to drive significant growth in its data center business in the coming months.
China has become a significant market for AI chips from U.S. companies, as only few domestic alternatives exist currently. AMD likely wants to capitalize on this demand while tailoring its products to meet export control requirements.
AMD’s CEO confirmed earlier today that more Radeon RX 7000 series cards are arriving soon at the company Q2 2023 earnings call. This will follow its recent launch of the RX 7600 which competes with the Nvidia RTX 4060.